Q. I’m working on a manuscript where the author starts many block quotes with lowercase words. Is this
okay?
A. Yes. It’s a service to readers to use whichever case fits with the text that introduces the quotation.
In legal or technical writing, linguistics, or literary criticism, though, the original casing might have significance, in
which case you must retain it.
Q. I teach my students to keep the capitalization used in the original text when quoting in a paper or to indicate with brackets
when the original text has been changed. I also tell them to alter the original casing to mesh into their sentences. However,
examples in some English grammar books maintain the capitalization on poetry, even when meshing into a writer’s
sentence, e.g., “Frost writes of the separation of ‘Two roads.’ ”
Is this correct, or should it be “the separation of ‘[t]wo roads’ ”?
A. Both methods are common. If readers see that capitalization does not mesh with the syntax of a sentence, or that brackets
are used, they have a clue as to the original casing. If the casing happens to mesh, the reader has no way to know whether
it’s been edited. If you’re preparing a paper where the issue is important (literary,
linguistic, or legal), you should explain your system in a note or preface. In most documents, however, overattention to such
matters merely bogs down the reader, and it’s normal practice to quietly change the casing to fit one’s
own syntax.
Q. Lots of questions here seem to boil down to a choice between rigorous consistency and a pleasing typographic appearance.
Here’s another one. I was wondering about double quotation marks when shortening an article title in
a footnote. If the full title of the article is “‘Un bell’oratorio
all’uso di Roma’: Patronage and Secular Context of the Oratorio in Baroque Rome,”
should I leave the double quotation marks when giving the short title, i.e., “‘Un
bell’oratorio all’uso di Roma’”? It
looks a bit silly, this doubly enshrined title. I would appreciate your take on this!
A. Yes, in the case of a title, use both double and single marks to make it clear that it’s a quotation.
This is in contrast to using only one set when excerpting quoted speech from an original source. For instance, if Alice says,
“The next question is, ‘Who in the world am I?’”
and we want to quote part of that, it’s sufficient to write that Alice asks, “Who
in the world am I?”
Q. How do you handle text-message content? Is it put in quotation marks or do you use italics?
A. A message is a message, whether it comes from a book, an interview, lipstick on a mirror, or your phone. Use quotation marks
to quote.
Q. Although CMOS 6.9 states clearly that commas and periods should always go within quotation marks, it doesn’t provide
a solution when you have to put the single and double quotation marks together, as in “He announced,
‘These quotation marks look terrible.’” Is there a prescribed
amount of space that goes between the single and double quotes in these cases?
A. Please see CMOS 6.11: “When single quotation marks nested within double quotation marks appear next to each other,
no space need be added between the two except as a typographical nicety subject to the publisher’s requirements.”
(You can find this by typing “single quotation marks” into the Search box or by
looking in the index under “Quotation marks: single: double next to.”)
Q. I’m looking for the etched-in-stone rule that states that a dialogue tag should be lowercase after
a question (i.e., “What is it?” she asked, as opposed to “What
is it?” She asked). I have both the 15th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style and the trial online version here and have so far been unable to find it. Any help is appreciated.
A. The rule is fundamental: If a word continues a sentence, lowercase it (unless it’s a proper name).
If a word begins a new sentence, uppercase the first letter. Thus, if “She” is
capped after a quotation (as it sometimes is), it signals a new sentence: “What is it?”
She asked three times before she gave up.
Q. I typed out a transcript of a video online to use in a paper. The lecturer says “uh”
several times. Should I include these in my quotation or remove them?
A. Some transcribers include such noises; others edit them out. If coughs and stutters are irrelevant to your point, it’s
better (and kinder) to omit them, but if you omit anything potentially meaningful, you should include a note with the transcript
explaining your method.
Q. I have a question concerning the use of brackets. In the sentence below, taken from an NPR article, what purpose do the brackets
serve? “In almost two years, we find about 31 percent of papers with unreasonable copy[ing] and plagiarism,”
she says, shaking her head.
A. The brackets indicate that the writer of the article altered or inserted something in order to make sense of the sentence.
Q. I am a fourth-grade teacher and am currently teaching my students how to insert dialogue into their personal narratives.
Can the students insert the dialogue directly into their paragraph, or do they need to create a new paragraph and indent?
What is the rule? When looking at novels I see dialogue being written each way.
A. It’s traditional to start a new paragraph with each new speaker. That is, a piece of dialogue can go
straight into the paragraph as long as the person saying it was the last person mentioned. If someone else speaks, begin a
new paragraph instead. This makes it clear who is speaking and when the speaker changes; it eliminates the need to write “Louise
said” or “Fernando said” every time. Tell your students
that experienced writers break the rule when it gets in the way, but that they should follow the rule until they’re
able to give a reason for breaking it.
Q. In quoting material that appears in the form of a bullet list, can that list be presented as a block quote? If so, does it
follow the standard convention where quotation marks are not necessary?
A. Yes and yes. Format it as a block quotation, without quotation marks, and make it clear in the text leading into the quote
that it is quoted—for example, “Magoo provides the following list.”
