Q. We have a quotation from a book source, just two sentences, and the author has taken the first part of the quote from page 5 and the second part of the quote from page 4, and she includes a 4-dot ellipse in the middle to indicate missing text. How do we source that? Do we write “pages 4–5” in the note? Or perhaps “5, 4” to indicate that it’s out of order? I’m hoping you won’t tell me to do two different notes or rewrite . . . and that you won’t correct the run-on sentence above. (:
A. This type of quoting misrepresents the original text by changing the order of the sentences. It is a misquotation. You must either make two different quotes or rewrite! You can use the same note to source the two quotations, however, listing the page numbers in the order they are quoted from: 5, 4. (We’ll give you a pass on the run-on sentence.)