Quotations

Any long quotation—from 4-7 lines—must be indented ½” from the left margin only and single-spaced. The quote should not be indented at all from the right margin. Indented quotations do not include quotation marks, as quotations within a paragraph do. Do not include quotations longer than 7 lines; paraphrase or edit them.

Edited quotations must be indicated as follows: when the quotation you wish to include begins with a capital letter but is in the middle of your sentence, change that capital to a lower-case letter, indicating the change with square brackets, i.e. “[t]his way.” The opposite is true as well (making a lower-case letter into upper-case when you begin your sentence with the quote). If you omit words, sentences, or paragraphs from the quotation, indicate this with an ellipsis, or “three dots”, if the omission allows you to construct a single sentence. If you omit pieces which do not fit into a single sentence, use an ellipsis plus a period, to indicate the end of a sentence.

Here is an example.

The original: “This was a very long quotation, but I chose to use only part of it. Many times, you will find that such editing is not only useful, but also necessary, because you will not need all the information in a given paragraph or even on a given page. You see, historians go on at length to prove their point.

However, I believe that you will still get the point of this whole section which I find germane to my argument if I omit some information which I do not think any of us needs to read in order to come to a conclusion.”¹

The quote: “This was a very long quotation, but I chose to use only part of it.... I believe that you will still get the point... if I omit some information.”²

Note that the quote ends with a period even though the sentence did not end at the same point; the ellipsis, in other words, is omitted at the end of the quote. This is Chicago Manual of Style format, and may not be what you learned in other classes or in high school (I, too, learned a slightly different way until I got to graduate school and had to learn Chicago style).

The superscript numbers refer to notes at the end of this document.

You must at all costs learn what constitutes plagiarism—both exact copying and paraphrasing—because papers which are partially or fully plagiarized will result in failure for the course. Please talk with me if you have even the slightest doubt about how to paraphrase information or use quoted material. As most universities define plagiarism, intention to copy is not a requirement: in other words, if you have not been taught how to summarize in your own words and you fail to do it, you are still guilty. Refer to the Student Conduct Code for further information and examples.

1. Kathleen M. Comerford, “Gibberish Written to Explain the Use of Quotations,” February 14, 2000, 1.

2. Comerford, “Gibberish,” February 14, 2000, 1.