Quotes
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Short quotes (from a few words up to two or three lines) need “double quotation marks” to set them off from the rest of the text, quotes within quotes ‘simple quotation marks’. A quote exceeding three or four lines needs to be put in a paragraph of its own using the paragraph style Quotations which provides for an Indent before text of 1cm and an Indent after text also of 1cm. You could further adapt the Quotations style, choosing Proportional Line spacing of 130% instead of 1.5 and giving it a slightly smaller sized font of 11pt instead of 12pt. Italics are not commonly used any more for quotes.
Ellipses in square brackets […] are used as a stand-in for left-out parts of your quote. The amount of left-out text should not, however, be too large, otherwise the whole thing could become quite arbitrary and you could end up using bits of the original text but completely devoid of the original context. Square brackets can also be used to signify change of capitalisation. Sometimes they are used to insert translations of unfamiliar words. Example: “The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation […]. 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)
An ellipsis without square brackets is often used as a stylistic means for symbolizing incomplete utterances. “I don’t know …”, he said, wanting to gain time.
When to Quote?
Use quotes sparingly. If you are say simply describing the views of an author on child education, then preferably do it in your own words. Too many direct quotes could easily give the reader the impression you are just beefing up your text.
There are two circumstances where you would in my opinion need direct quotes: You want to analyse a possibly controversial or particularly difficult passage in depth, in which case you of course need to quote the object of your analysis – not forgetting of course to take into consideration the textual as well as the historical and social context in which it is embedded and which readership it addresses. Another situation would be if you want to prove that the author is contradicting him or herself or that his or her public face does not correspond to what she writes in this or that other publication.
