English essay quotes

Basically, I do edexcel igcse English and in a lot of questions it’s says use ‘brief quotations’, is it really that important? Because I find myself using longer quotes but I do re-quote when I’m zooming in techniques, does it affect my marks?

Reply 1

Vie.explains

Original post

by hamna22

Hey so usually When Edexcel say “brief quotations” they are trying to stop people copying big chunks of the text instead of analysing it. Using longer quotes won’t automatically make you lose marks. what matters is how well you analyse them, not their length.If you’re using a longer quote for context and then requoting words or phrases it’s usually fine it only really becomes an issue if you include long quotes and don’t analyse most of them.

Reply 2

(A.K.S)

It does matter.

Edexcel says “brief quotations” because they want precise word-level analysis, not long copied chunks. Using longer quotes won’t directly lower your mark, especially if your analysis is strong and you zoom in on specific words afterwards.

That said, consistently using short, embedded quotations looks more controlled and is what top-band answers usually do. Long quotes can limit how much analysis you fit in. A good balance is using a short quote most of the time, and only using a slightly longer one for context before re-quoting key words.

Hope this helped!

(edited 2 months ago)

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