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.
‘Digital technologies are now seen as an integral part of maintaining education’s relevance to the fast-changing economics world’ (Selwyn, 2017, p. 23).
If a quotation is longer than 40 words, no quotation marks are used, and the quotation is indented instead:
Bellos and Montagu warn of copyright challenges to come:
Because the “learning” or “training” of A.I. depends on its exposure to underlying materials that are in the main protected by copyright – images, sounds, databases of information – the development of new A.I. tools will surely spawn the next generation of copyright litigation, where the output of the A.I., if not its very existence, may be challenged as an infringement (Bellos and Montagu, 2024, p. 334).
place a colon (:) at the end of your writing before the quote
leave a space of one line before and after a long quotation
do not use quotation marks around a long quotation
indent the quote
if your assignment is in double spacing, have the quotation in single spacing (for Harvard; there may be different guidelines for other bibliographic styles)
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).
Weller (2020, p. 146) summarises the use of digital badges suggesting that ‘[t]hey don’t need to be for everyone, but for a certain group of learners, they provide motivation, reward, and structure to learning that they value’.
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’.