12. Quotations

2.1.712.1 Set long quotations (over two sentences or verse lines) as block quotations.

12.2 Set short quotations between double quote marks. Periods and commas are inside the quote marks. Set qotations within quotations between single quote marks.

12.3 Quotations that have been translated by the author to English should include the original in a footnote.

12.4 Omissions by the author from citations are always signaled by an ellipsis between square brackets: […]. Pertinent punctuation around the ellipsis is maintained to clarify what been excised:

The enticing, tangy smell of the Blue Stilton reached Augustus’s nostrils. If all went well today on the battlefield, he would reward himself with a large slice, that is, if his lover hadn’t consumed the entire cheese by then.

This original can be cited, for example, as follows :

“The enticing, tangy smell of the Blue Stilton reached Augustus’s nostrils. […] [H]e would reward himself with a large slice, that is, if his lover hadn’t consumed the entire cheese by then.”

“The enticing, tangy smell of the Blue Stilton reached Augustus’s nostrils. If all went well today […], he would reward himself with a large slice, that is, if his lover hadn’t consumed the entire cheese by then.”

“The […] smell of the Blue Stilton reached Augustus’s nostrils. If all went well today on the battlefield, he would reward himself with a large slice.”

12.5 When introducing quotations in running text, always use a comma and preserve the capitalization of the original.

As Lucretius writes, "When atoms move straight down through the void by their own weight, they deflect a bit in space at a quite uncertain time and in uncertain places, just enough that you could say that their motion has changed."

As Lucretius writes about atoms, "they deflect a bit in space at a quite uncertain time and in uncertain places, just enough that you could say that their motion has changed."

12.6 When introducting block quotations, use a colon to introduce a quotation starting with a capital, and a comma to introduce a quotation starting mid-sentence.

As Lucretius writes:

When atoms move straight down through the void by their own weight, they deflect a bit in space at a quite uncertain time and in uncertain places, just enough that you could say that their motion has changed.

As Lucretius writes about atoms,

they deflect a bit in space at a quite uncertain time and in uncertain places, just enough that you could say that their motion has changed.