Quotations

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.

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.

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?”

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.

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.”)

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.

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.

A. The brackets indicate that the writer of the article altered or inserted something in order to make sense of the sentence.

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.

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.”