Quoting Well, Part 1: It’s More Than Just Accuracy

November 30, 2011, 4:13 am

Academics love to quote—as evidence, as embellishment, as filler. Snippets and long blocks. Quotations within quotations. It’s a pity that so many do it so poorly. Here is Part 1 of some advice from a copy editor experienced in tidying up quotations.

—On accuracy. Long quotations in the manuscripts I read seem more error-free than in years past, which I attribute to easy cutting and pasting from online sources (as opposed to inexpert typing). Unfortunately, easy pasting also increases the rate at which published typos are replicated. So read what you paste, and if anything looks amiss, investigate further.

—On syntax. Some writers have a tin ear when it comes to sliding a quotation nicely into a sentence. It’s OK to borrow a word or two from the quotation in order to avoid chopping “it into a quoted phrase” of ugliness. As long as the actual quotation is accurate, no one will accuse you of plagiarism if instead you finesse it into a “quoted phrase” that’s more lovely.

—On capitalization. Changing the case of the first word of a quotation to jibe with its surroundings is a well-accepted convention that is not always understood or observed by writers. I’ll discuss how to do this in more detail in Part 2.

—On ellipses. Leaving material out of a quotation requires those three little dots … and causes endless confusion for quoters. The Chicago Manual of Style has good advice in Chapter 13 (which I will expand on in Part 3). But here’s one tip: Ellipses are rarely needed at the beginning or end of a quotation. Readers understand that a quotation is taken from a larger text, so save your dots for material that’s missing from the middle and for quotations that end midsentence.

—On sources. The source is not part of the quotation, but it is usually treated as part of the containing sentence: “The borrowings of good writers are never thus superfluous” (Walter Raleigh, Style, 117). Thus the source follows the ending quotation mark, and the sentence ends after the source.

When you set off a long quotation as a block, however, there are no quotation marks. So put the source after the end of the last sentence, lest it be taken as part of the quote. By convention, the source itself has no ending punctuation.

In its grossest and most servile form quotation is a lazy folly; a thought
has received some signal or notorious expression, and as often as the old
sense, or something like it, recurs, the old phrase rises to the lips. This
degenerates to simple phrase-mongering, and those who practise it are
not vigilantly jealous of their meaning. (Walter Raleigh, Style, 117)

—On sic. Sic is properly used (1) when you must reproduce a suspicious or incorrect original exactly and wish to make it clear that you have not introduced the problem yourself in typing, or (2) when the error is relevant to the discussion. Use sic humanely. If the original contains a typo of no consequence, it is polite—and justifiable—to correct it quietly.

In Part 2, I’ll write about when it’s OK, and not OK, to change something in a quotation.

______

Quotations from Walter Raleigh are from his Style, 3rd ed. (London: Edward Arnold, 1898).

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Readers may send Carol questions about academic writing, editing, and publishing. Write to her at AskCarolSaller@gmail.com. (Please ask questions about Chicago style here.)

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22086364

Well, pooh. I’ve been making mistakes, willy nilly. Properly chastened, I shall change my ways. Thank you!
MarjoryMunson

Thank you for this valuable information. I am most familiar with APA but your article encourages me to do now something I have been procrastinating – become familiar with the various other styles.
11179102

Lingua Franca is one of the best features of online Chronicle. These ongoing writing tutorials are just terrific. Thanks!
roberttobin

I’m printing this out for my students, who do not seem to believe me when I tell them about the relationship between quotation marks, parenthetical page references, and periods!
sand6432

A major problem in scholarship is that scholars often do not return to the original source for a quotation, but take it from a secondary source that may have misquoted the original. This practice leads to the recurrence of mistakes in quotations. In pre-Google days, it used to be very time-consuming for copyeditors to check quotations, but now with Google Book search available, many quotations can be checked in just a few seconds by typing a sentence from the quotation into the Google search box. I wonder how many copyeditors actually do this?—Sandy Thatcher

carolsaller

But Sand6432, it’s really the author’s responsibility to quote accurately. The copyeditor has plenty else to do, and we can’t necessarily access sources from paid databases. I Google quotes that look fishy, but otherwise, no.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=504803007 Sylvia Hunter

Like Carol, I Google quotes that look fishy, but I don’t Google every quote. I find enough transcription errors when Googling fishy quotes that I often wonder, with a mental shudder, how many other such errors I’m failing to catch by not Googling everything … but there are only so many hours in the day.

There was a wonderful article in Journal of Scholarly Publishing a few years ago (“Mis/Adventures in Mis/Quoting”, by David Henige) about exactly this thing — the perpetuation of errors, that is.

cdjunkjunk

For those taking these points back to your classes, remember that “ellipsis” (singular) is the correct way to refer to an omission in the text.

The set of three periods/dots or other marks used to indicate an omission are NOT ellipses (plural); they are referred to by other names, such as ellipsis marks, ellipsis points, etc.

The paragraph above could eliminate possible confusion by using the title “On ellipsis” and revising a sentence to read “But here’s one tip: Ellipsis is rarely needed … .”

Also, remember that different style guides have specific rules for spacing the dots and other particulars related to ellipsis.

carolsaller

Cdjunkjunk, your last point is well taken. Otherwise (with respect), you are wrong! An “ellipsis” can be the three-dot mark (see M-W’s 11th Collegiate), and the plural “ellipses” can refer to more than one such mark.

cdjunkjunk

Of course — I didn’t say otherwise.

There’s nothing technically “wrong” with what I wrote: my rushed posting just left a clause unclear and incomplete (a different kind of “wrong,” we could say, from what you suggest). So I’ll now take the extra minute I should have taken earlier.

“The set of three periods/dots or other marks used to indicate an omission are NOT ellipses (plural)” ~

My obvious goof is the subject/verb disagreement, which points to “set,” which was left over from an earlier sentence and muddles the meaning.

In my experience, most people erroneously refer to a single occurrence of the “three-dot mark” (which, again might not in fact be a single mark or character, depending on the style guide and the word-processing system) as “ellipses” rather than an “ellipsis.”

I think that people sense that “ellipses” is a plural, and they thus believe that it must refer to the multiple dots (each of which would then be an “ellipsis,” according to that reasoning, but people generally don’t take that (il)logical step).

I should have written something like “The three periods/dots themselves are not ‘ellipses’ (plural).”

I intended simply to add to your article a reminder to make a distinction between “ellipsis” and “ellipses” so we can keep that cobweb clear from the thinking beneath our words.

And I never said that your paragraph was “wrong,” technically or otherwise, only that it could have accomplished one more thing by using the singular, thus forcing either you or the reader to address the gap between “ellipsis” and the more frequently heard “ellipses.”

So blah blah blah … probably too many words to describe the hairs on the nit’s knees.

Bottom line: I love the points you offer and enjoy this series very much!

dottyeyes

I’m curious about who among us tries to weed out the awkward constructions like “he stated” and “Jones et al. write.” These drive me up a wall, but I try to keep my cotton-picking editorial fingers off them, especially if I’m asked for a light edit. This happens a lot in academic books, as professors love to quote, but don’t know how to do it (unless they’re English professors). If I can’t take it anymore, I quote CMOS, 15th ed., in a query and offer a specific suggestion. (For example, “Au: CMOS recommends avoiding certain types of intros to quotes: ‘Such perfunctory phrases as “Jacqueline Jones writes:”
or “The defendant stated:” are often awkward, and sensitive writers avoid them.” Reword here to something like ‘Miller believes that setting your goals early can lead to improved academic perfomance:’?”). I’m probably too picky, right? What do you think?

carolsaller

Dottyeyes, yes, maybe a tad picky. In fact, that section was eliminated in CMOS 16.

dottyeyes

Well, if you say it’s OK to leave these alone, Carole, I guess I can lighten up, too. Actually, just typing those words has lifted a weight off my shoulders! It’s too common a construction to keep battling.
dank48

Perhaps the obsessive need for typographic novelty that infected CMOS 15 (Scala) and then CMOS 16 (Tisa) will have been worked out, and CMOS 17 will go back to Times Roman. God knows I’m no particular fan of plain old, bland old TR for most purposes, but its utter lack of eccentricity seems to me to be exactly what’s needed in a reference work on writing, editing, and publishing books. The last thing one needs while trying to make sense of e.g. ellipses is a typeface calling attention to itself.

http://www.arrantpedantry.com Jonathon Owen

Ellipses are a source of multiple kinds of abuse. One of my least favorite is when authors quote something from page 73 and then, following an ellipsis, quote something from page 72. Using an ellipsis this way is misleading, because it implies that the original author said x and then y instead of y and then x, and it can be frustrating for readers who are trying to find quote x and are looking on the wrong page for it.

If there are large gaps between two quotations or if they’re out of sequence, it’s best to quote them separately rather than stitch them together with ellipses.
elle82

Ms. Saller:
This is very helpful! I’m eagerly awaiting Part 2, and I hope you will address whether we Americans can/should change British spellings in quotes (for example, colour to color). I know the Chicago Manual of Style says no, but I always worry that the “odd” spelling may draw readers’ attention from the content of the quote toward the spelling.

carolsaller

[Preview of Part 2, just for Elle82, re changing British spelling: Nope.]

elle82

Bummer! I was afraid you would say that…But thanks for the sneak preview!

jffoster

Elle82 uses two modal auxiliaries in wondering whether we “can/should change British spellings in quotes”.

We certainly can. Nobody can stop us. Whether we should or not is another modal and another matter.

Remember that style manuals are not legal statutes and to be clear and fair, Ms. Saller has to my knowledge never represented them as such, but has pointed it out that there different styles are.

http://twitter.com/juleshofmann Julie A Hofmann

This is very helpful — although when I point my students to it, I’ll have to remind them that the parenthetical reference won’t work for those of us in fields where the ‘notes and bibliography’ style is the norm.

carolsaller

Actually, Julie, it’s fine to use parenthetical source notes in addition to notes and bibliographies, especially for frequently cited texts.

MarjoryMunson

I am coming back to this posting on the second day and am delighted to note that the author actually read and responded to comments. There is not a lot of that going around. Thank you again, Carol Saller!
siobhancurious

Very useful! I don’t follow Lingua Franca regularly, but I’m beginning to believe I should. I have linked to this post on my own blog, here:
http://siobhancurious.com/2011/12/01/how-to-use-quotations/
beedhamm

A quibble:
“—On capitalization. Changing the case of the first word of a quotation to jibe with its surroundings is a well-accepted convention”
I suspect the author means “Changing the case of the first letter” not the first word which would mean changing a word in the nominative case (usually) to the genitive or objective.

I love the humane approach taken to the use of “sic.” How civilized.

dank48

I’d like to second the sentiment about “[sic]” (and I wish I knew how to get italics here). It’s like capital punishment: it may be justifiable on rare occasions, but its overuse says a lot more about the user than about those it’s used on.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=504803007 Sylvia Hunter

Thirded. The mean-spirited use of [sic] is a menace to civilized scholarly discourse.

dank48, you do italics by putting (i) before your italicized term and (/i) after it, but using angle brackets instead of ~~round brackets~~ parentheses.

dank48

Thanks very much, Sylvia. And thanks also for the reminder of simpler days, when there were parentheses, brackets, and braces, and “” were left to the mathematicians.

zincsulfate

Zinc sulphate obvious goof is the subject/verb disagreement, which points to “set,”
which was left over from an earlier sentence and muddles the meaning.