Grammar Check: How to Write a Quotation

What would you do for romance? This question has been put to a test by an outgoing young man who meets an aspiring young woman in a poetry reading. An awkward but cute crush blossoms into something more sinister when he becomes the new love interest of the woman he represents. With the help of the internet and other social networking tools, he uses each tool at his disposal – including people he feels are obstacles – to be close enough to her to feel like he can really hurt her. The tension grows as they move closer together until she asks him to be her boyfriend. Is he ready for this serious of a relationship?

Echo Park, a fresh new psychological thriller from the writers of TV’s How I Met Your Mother, is about a bookstore manager’s ex-wife, played by actress Candace Kane. Echo Park’s main character is Echo Lee, played by Emory Rosen-killz. As the show progresses, you get a better sense of why the two of them are so drawn to each other. The two of them become lovers, which leads to a break-up and eventual divorce.

Echo Park is set in Chicago, in the late 90s. It follows the life of the single mother who runs a bookstore. As she tries to balance her career, she finds herself falling in love with a man whose profile fits closely (and who acts just a bit too lovingly). This man is Martin – played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster, an Australian actor known best for his work on the television shows Brothers, Royal Family and quite possibly as the villain of the future film franchise Pirates of the Caribbean 4.

In order to give the characters in Echo Park a little more depth, Rosemary and Peter try to come up with a story to tell. They decide to turn the story into a screenplay using the first person singular and plural forms of the verb “to be.” This is a nice idea, but since there’s very little use of the singular “you,” it doesn’t really fit the story and feels forced. Still, the verb is much more natural for most people than the singular “you,” and you don’t need to have the correct forms for this example anyway: “You were wonderful.”

“You were beautiful.” This example makes use of the second person pronoun, “you,” in addition to the singular “you,” which we’ve learned in most courses. However, the second person pronoun is important here because it indicates that this was a gift, which was presented to her by her husband. You may want to shorten this to “you were lovely,” or simply “you were lovely.” Just make sure you choose the correct form of the verb.

Another good example for using the singular “you” comes from the movie Groundhog Day. When Bill Murray’s character relives his life, he often says things like, “I am so glad I had you… You’re like a blacksmith.” In this example, you can see how easy it is to write the sentence as “I thank you very mote it [I’m] so glad you were here.”