Q. I am quoting a magazine article. The quoted material is from a speech, so not all of it is pertinent to the way I am condensing it for my readers. My question is about quotation marks. I finish quoting a section and then proceed to the next paragraph, which is a new quote. The new quote does not directly follow the previous paragraph in the original. Do I place quotation marks directly after the previous paragraph? So,
“. . . And I saw more and more people listening.”
“And those old-timers of us started watching it explode . . .”
If it were one continuous statement, I wouldn’t place the quotation marks at the end of the first paragraph, but this is different, since I’m just picking up a different part of the statement quoted above. Should I leave the quote marks at the end of the first paragraph, or should I mislead my reader to think that I quoted exactly as the speaker said it?
A. There’s no need to mislead your readers. Either add guiding words (“Further on he adds” or “He continues” or some such), or put the page numbers in parentheses after each quotation (34), or use ellipses (. . .) to indicate that material is left out between quotations.