For example, don’t write: “The attorney asked me “Do you want to take the deal?”” Jenson said. A correct use of quotation marks in that sentence would read: “The attorney asked me, ‘Do you want to take the deal?’” Jenson said.
For instance, you might want to quote Bono as saying, “I think he is someone who really cares about the production value. ” Bono said this in conversation about his bandmate, The Edge. When you publish the quote, you could adjust it to read, “I think [U2 guitarist The Edge] is someone who really cares about the production value. ” In this way, you can use quotes that would otherwise not make sense if quoted directly word-for-word. Alternately, you could leave the original pronoun in the quote, and write “I think he [U2 guitarist The Edge] is someone who really cares about the production value. ” Do not substitute parentheses for brackets, as this indicates that the information in the parentheses was said by the speaker of the quote, rather than added by you.
Never alter quotes.
Provide at least a full paragraph of explanatory text before introducing quotes from the main actors involved in the story. If you intend to use quotes at all in your story, introduce them in the third or fourth paragraph. One exception is when writing longer feature articles in a news magazine or, less commonly, in a newspaper.
One quote per paragraph is often enough. However, if you choose to include a longer paragraph consisting of mostly or entirely quoted material, you only need to reference the source once. For instance, you could write: “Our forces are spread thin,” Commander Jones said. “Though the enemy is concentrated in the north, they are massing additional forces in the east, and their allies are gathering strength in the west. ”
In the case of unusual phrases or language, partial quotes are acceptable. For instance: Senator Michaels was “bowled over” by the response to his legislation. This vocabulary choice is unusual and may indicate something about Senator Michaels’ personality.
For instance, suppose you write the following sentence: Candidate X is a “dirty communist” and is unfit to hold office. Assuming Candidate X is not a communist, you could be sued for utilizing defamatory speech, even though you enclosed “dirty communist” in quotation marks.
For instance, you could write: “Unscrew yourself from yourself! (Relax and don’t worry!)” Explanation might also be needed to clarify the referent of a given quote. For example, if a politician says, “They are way too high,” you could revise the quote for added clarity by writing, “[Taxes] are way too high. ” The brackets indicate you’ve inserted the word “taxes” in place of the speaker’s original word choice.
Be very careful when using an ellipsis to remove words from a quotation. Always stay true to the speaker’s original intention.
Other literary names and titles – including poems, articles, chapter titles, and plays – should likewise be surrounded by quotation marks. “Romeo and Juliet” and “Howl,” for instance, are the correct ways to refer to those works.
