Working with texts

Always write about a text, a movie, a play … in the present tense

✅ Correct	❌ Wrong
“The author writes” …	“The author ~~wrote~~ …”
“Joe speaks very quietly in this scene.”	“Joe ~~spoke~~ very quietly in this scene.”
“The two characters argue with each other …”	“The two charaters ~~argued~~ with each other …”
“The writer questions if …”	“The writer ~~questioned~~ if …”

This is called the literary present — check out some more details about it.

Source: “The real lessons from 9/11”, The Economist, 11.09.2021

✅ Correct	⭕️ OK, but not ideal	❌ Wrong
The author writes that many US citizens are in a “mood of fatigue and apathy” (l. 7). ▶ Best option because the line reference is clear and still as unobtrusive [unaufdringlich] as possible. The literal quote [wörtliches Zitat] at the end is marked by quotation marks [Anführungszeichen]	The author writes in line 7 that many US citizens are in a “mood of fatigue and apathy”. ▶ Not ideal because the line reference has too much weight by making it part of the sentence structure, the literal quote does have quotation marks – so this option is not wrong but also not as good as the first one	The author writes that many US citizens are in a mood of fatigue and apathy. ▶ Wrong because (a) there is no line reference at all and (b) the last couple of words are a literal quote that is not marked by quotation marks

There are some abbreviations [Abkürzungen] for writing line references that you should know:

What you write	What it means	Further explanation
l. 7	line 7	refers to [bezieht sich auf] just that one line
l. 7 f	line 7 and exactly one following line	refers to lines 7 and 8
l. 7 ff	line 7 and the following lines	refers to lines 7 and some lines after it
ll. 7 – 10	lines 7 to 10	refers to exactly those four lines, the double “l” is for the plural “lines”, it’s usually not used with the “ff” abbreviation