Quotes
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Short quotes need “double quotation marks” to set them off from the rest of the text. Longer ones need a paragraph of their own – usually indented and possibly in slightly smaller font size. If you have a line spacing of 1.5 for your Body Text, you might want to choose a slightly smaller one of say 130% for your quotes.
Ellipses in square brackets […] are used as a stand-in for left-out parts of your quote. Square brackets can also be used to insert explanatory words into your quote, but which are not actually part of the original.
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely [the] relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. (Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859)
Take care that these fill-in words don’t in any way alter the meaning of the quote!
An ellipsis without square brackets you would use for words left out already in the original quote or for symbolizing incomplete utterances. ‘Single quotation marks’ you would use for quotes within a quote.
When to Quote?
Use quotes sparingly. If you are say simply reproducing the views of an author on child education in your own words, then there might well be no reason for any direct quotes. If on the other hand you want to dwell on one of his or her theses or formulations which you find especially controversial or difficult to interpret or even in contradiction with other statements by the same author, then you would want to quote the passage in question.
