Formatting of direct quotations
Last updated
Last updated
First, remember from the information on identifying and acknowledging sources that direct quotations should be used sparingly. You should quote directly only where the authors' exact words are particularly important, or their arguments so well-stated that you cannot paraphrase them effectively.
Where you judge it appropriate to use direct quotations, make sure to format them correctly as outlined below.
Direct quotations of fewer than 40 words should be integrated into your writing. The quotation should be part of the author’s prose so that the whole sentence is grammatically coherent, and their beginning and end are marked with single quotation marks, as in (12) below. Note that the closing quotation mark must be placed before the following punctuation mark.
(12) Akita and Dingemanse (2019:1) define ideophones as 'marked words that depict sensory imagery' .
Direct quotations longer than 40 words are presented in a separate paragraph, as shown in (13) below. To separate the direct quotation from the main body of the text, it must be set off from the main body of the text by:
Indenting it by equally on the left and right margins (by about 6 mm)
Using single line-spacing
Note that long, indented quotations are not enclosed in quotation marks. The source needs to be specified, either in the preceding text (e.g. Macaulay (2002: 284) argues that QUOTATION, as with a shorter quote), or else in a separate line at the bottom of the indented paragraph, with author, year of publication and page number in parentheses, as shown in (13).
Long quotations should never be enclosed within a sentence of the author’s main text since it is difficult for a reader to carry on the meaning of the sentence.
If the original text to be quoted is modified in any way (e.g. to make it intelligible or to shorten it), this must be indicated with the use of square brackets. The text quoted in (14) appears in the original chapter by Rickford and Eckert (2001) as follows:
(14) Style is a pivotal construct in the study of sociolinguistic variation. Stylistic variability in speech affords us the possibility of observing linguistic change in progress (Labov 1966). Moreover, since all individuals and social groups have stylistic repertoires, the styles in which they are recorded must be taken into account when comparing them (Rickford and McNair-Knox 1994:265). Finally, style is the locus of the individuals' internalization of broader social distributions of variation (Eckert 2000).
In the quotation in (15), the text has been slightly altered:
(15) Rickford and Eckert (2001: 1) posit that ‘[s]tyle is a pivotal construct in the study of sociolinguistic variation [and that] [s]tylistic variability [...] affords us the possibility of observing linguistic change in progress’.
style and stylistic are spelled with lower case rather than capital ‘s’ because they are no longer used sentence-initially.
‘and that’ has been inserted between the first and second sentence of the original text for continuity.
some text has been omitted from the second sentence of the original text, indicated with an ellipsis in brackets [...].
Because the alterations are inserted in square brackets and ‘[...]’ is used to indicate omissions, readers know immediately not only that the quotation in (15) deviates from the original text but they also know exactly where and how it deviates.
On rare occasions, the text to be quoted may contain a mistake. If this is the case, ‘[sic]’ is inserted after the mistake to indicate that it occurred in the original text and has not been introduced by you when quoting the original.
(16) Documenting the evolution of what’s more in the history of English, Brinton (2008: 210) notes that ‘[i]n the beginning, {which, what} is more is clause internal and functions as an [sic] relative adjunct adjoined to a phrasal category’.
Secondary quoting is the use of a quotation or argument that is cited in another source. This is how Kamwangamalu (2010: 129) cites Liu et al. in (17) below: Kamwangamalu has read the point from Liu et al. (2005) only in Rubdy (2007) page 322, and not from Liu et al. directly.
(17) In this regard, Liu et al. (2005, cited in Rubdy 2007: 322) argue that in an increasingly globalized world, CS may need to be added as a curriculum objective, a required life skill.
Secondary quoting of this kind should be avoided if at all possible. If you can access the original source, you should do so. If secondary quoting cannot be avoided, you must reference the secondary source (i.e., the one you have read) and the original source (i.e., the one you are quoting). Both sources must be included in your List of References.