Quotations and Dialogue

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?

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?

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.

Q. A manuscript I am editing uses a lengthy extract from a source that uses brackets; in fact the original is sprinkled with unitalicized bracketed “sics.” What do I do? I don’t want readers to think these interjections are added by us! I could say “brackets in original,” but there are a couple of things we have had to add in brackets, too. Perhaps I should put a [ sic] next to every [sic]. (Just kidding.)

Q. Can I write dialogues without quotation marks as the author Frank McCourt did in his three memoirs?

Q. Dear Editor, I am editing a quarterly bulletin for a church, and have run into a problem. “It’s” is confused with “its” in a lengthy article an author quotes in his text. Given your feeling on the overuse of “sic,” I’m wondering how best to handle this. Simply ignore it, or “sic” it? I appreciate your help. Thank you.

Q. I am having a serious debate with a colleague concerning interpolations/alterations to quotations. We are quoting a source that uses abbreviations in the copy: “A WBS displays . . .” I believe the correct way to provide the missing information to clarify the abbreviation is the following: “A W[ork] B[reakdown] S[tructure] displays . . .” However, she believes it should read: “A WBS [Work Breakdown Structure] displays . . .” Can you please clarify which is correct and if interpolations/additions should always come after the item you are trying to clarify. Thank you for your help with this!

Q. Look at the following example from CMOS 6.124:

What did she mean when she said, “The foot now wears a different shoe”?

Shouldn’t the question mark be INSIDE the quotation? If we are incorrect, please advise us.

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.

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?