Hi I emailed my lecturer to see if an essay was acceptable and I have fixed the majority of the problems. However he mentioned the quotes I had used and that I needed to provide a reference in the main text. Putting a "34" cryptically as an example. I'm trying to work out if this means referencing the number of the line from which the quote is written but am unsure. Before I go making mistakes I wanted to check with others to see if I am right in my assumption. Here is the gist of the email:

"...some of the quotes you include are on the long side. Make sure that you need these and that you provide a reference for them in the main body of the essay, eg (34)."

Thank you.

Google whatever format you're writing your paper in (or default to googling "MLA format" if none was specified) and look on those pages for how to cite long quotes.

think he might be referring to numerical referencing? most universities have an accepted way of referencing, find out which one yours uses and then google it.

depending on what discipline your essay is based, quoting long bits of text is generally frowned upon (possibly because it bumps up your word count, somewhat).

or... y'know, you could ask him what he meant?

Svenparty:
Hi I emailed my lecturer to see if an essay was acceptable and I have fixed the majority of the problems. However he mentioned the quotes I had used and that I needed to provide a reference in the main text. Putting a "34" cryptically as an example. I'm trying to work out if this means referencing the number of the line from which the quote is written but am unsure. Before I go making mistakes I wanted to check with others to see if I am right in my assumption. Here is the gist of the email:

Thank you.

Could he have meant use footnotes, for example like this:

"...some of the quotes you include are on the long side. Make sure that you need these and that you provide a reference for them in the main body of the essay, eg [1]"

Quote this post to see how footnotes work on the Escapist, it may be something similar or slightly different depending on what program you use, but the general gist is you insert a numbered footnote at the end of every quote (but edit reference in the main body of the text), but after formatting it should appear as footnote at the bottom of the page but separate from the main body of the text.

Svenparty:
"...some of the quotes you include are on the long side. Make sure that you need these and that you provide a reference for them in the main body of the essay, eg (34)."

Numerical references like these are usually page numbers in the source material. It's that way in MLA and Chicago B formats, at least.

Yeah, check the format you're using

Don't know the format? Check your syllabus.

Is it like the numbers they have inserted into the text on Wikipedia where they give the references to that number at the bottom of the page?

Svenparty:
"...some of the quotes you include are on the long side. Make sure that you need these and that you provide a reference for them in the main body of the essay, eg (34)."

In one of my essays, that would be the page number from which the quote was taken. it should be placed at the end of the sentence in which you use the quote, after the quotation marks but before the period.

The length of the quotes is a separate issue. My professors generally prefer that most of the paper be in my own words, and actual quotes be relatively short to make a specific point. For quotes longer than three lines you should use block quote format.

Thanks for the help I submitted it and heard it was good from my lecturer.