No Lonely Quotes. This gets my students attention every year! A lonely quote is a quote that has been thrown into the middle of the paragraph without any of the author’s/student’s words. It sits all alone, abandoned right there in the middle of a paragraph. This description, which I play up with as much emotion as any teacher-actor could muster, really helps my students to see that they cannot simply quote a sentence of text without leading into and/or out of that quotation with their own words. Then, as my students write their paragraphs, either literary or informational, I can remind them not to abandon those quotes within their paragraph- cue the waterworks!