To quote is to directly use another’s words and to acknowledge the source. If you are quoting someone word-for-word or using someone else's ideas or statistics in your writing, you will need to reference it within the body of your assignment.
Short quotations (less than 40 words) are included in your writing with the text in quotation marks. After the quote, add the author’s surname, the date of publication and the page number(s) of the quote.
O’Callaghan (2021, p. 228) discusses how “the greatest purpose we can ever set ourselves is to experience life to its fullest”.
Websites and some e-book formats do not have page numbers. If a page number is not given, use headings and paragraph numbers in place of the page number (see here for examples).
If a quotation is longer than 40 words, no quotation marks are used, and the quotation is indented instead:
Life has become increasingly documentable with social photography. However, Jurgenson (2019) explains that:.
To treat social photography solely in the terms of its aesthetic quality is analogous to judging all written
language on its poetic merits. Yes, there is room for poetry and its analysis just as there is room for art within
photographic inquiry, but it should only be part of the analysis and certainly not its dominant aspect. (p. 13)
place a colon (:) at the end of your writing before the quote
do not use quotation marks around the quotation
indent the quote half an inch from the left
if the citation is at the end (i.e. after the block quotation), insert it after the final full stop.
if the author's name has been used in the text of the introductory sentence, the year appears immediately after the author's name and the page number appears separately after the quotation. Otherwise, show the full citation at the end of the quotation, after the final full stop.
Sometimes you need to modify a quotation to suit your writing. Below are some way of doing this:
If you want to omit a word or words from a quotation, indicate this with an ellipsis (three dots) with a space before and after the ellipsis (…). A direct quotation should neither start nor end with an ellipsis. Words should only be omitted from a quotation if they are superfluous to the reason why you are using the quotation and the meaning of the quote is not affected by the change.
Simms (2009, p. 42) states that “in contrast to the annals, … genealogies were one of the first classes of text to be recorded in Irish”.
If you need to add a word or words to a quotation, or change the capitalisation of a word to fit with your writing, put the word(s)/letter in square brackets [ ]. Words should only be added to a quote for explanatory reasons (e.g. a name might be added to explain who a pronoun is referencing).
“Poll after poll has shown that they’re [pet owners] worried about how returning to the office will impact their furry companions, particularly after the Covid-19 crisis created a surge in pet adoptions and situations in which many people rarely left their pets’ sides” (Chan, 2021, p. 48).
If you need to indicate a misspelling, grammatical error or lack of inclusive language, insert the word [sic] (meaning so or thus) in square brackets immediately following the error but do not change the error in the quotation.
Flynn (2021, p. 2) explains that “consciencious [sic] people tend to be efficient and organised as opposed to easy-going and disorderly”.