When and How to Quote

What is a quote?
A standard quote
Quoting to correctly accredit concepts and coinages
Editing a quote where necessary
Quotes within quotes
Quoting longer citations
A note on respecting the source materials
References

What is a quote?

A quote is a direct citation taken from a source. We mainly use these when an author makes an especially poignant point, or phrases a relevant statement in a succinct or well-written way. You can basically quote any text that is relevant for your own writing, and that you don’t think would improve when you try to phrase it in your own words. In addition, you may also want to quote a source to imply that the conclusions drawn are the original author’s — and not necessarily yours.

When we quote, we retain the author’s original phrasing (insofar it fits within our own sentences and larger narrative), mark any changes we make to the original with [square brackets], surround the quotation with “quotation marks”, and we always specify exactly where the quote was lifted from by using page numbers and other locators in our in-text parenthetical reference.

A standard quote

For example, we might find the following statement in a source document:

In the case of The Talisman, for which King at times physically shared a writing desk with his co-author, the exchange of ideas beforehand and during the drafting process clearly influenced the other novels he was working on.

(Neyt 2025, ¶36)

Which we could incorporate as a quote into our own writing as follows:

✨ Best Practice

In his concluding remarks, Neyt argues that Stephen King’s collaborative writing process on The Talisman “clearly influenced the other novels he was working on” at the time (Neyt 2025, ¶36).

Note that the parenthetical reference at the end of that example is considered part of the sentence, and should therefore be included before the full stop that indicates the sentence’s end.

Quoting to correctly accredit concepts and coinages

When we want to reference coinage, unfamiliar term, or a more familiar term used in an unfamiliar context, we should also quote (rather than ‘paraphrase’) that term, the first time we use it in our own text. For example:

✨ Best Practice

As such, Neyt’s analysis of Stephen King’s writing process provides us with an apt example of what Van Hulle has termed “creative concurrence”: a symbiotic creative interaction that can occur when authors are writing several works simultaneously (Van Hulle 2021, ¶4).

Editing a quote where necessary

When quoting, we can also make changes to the quoted text, to help it fit inside our larger sentence structure. For example, we can highlight typos to signal they’re not our own, or we can simply correct them; we can conjugate verbs, or change their tenses; we can change the number (singular/plural) of nouns and verbs; we can remove words, phrases, or entire sentences from the quote, or split a quoted sentence in two, and add our own words in between the separated parts. When we do this, we must always:

indicate very clearly which words were lifted from the original source, by surrounding them with “quotation marks”;
indicate very clearly exactly how we altered the original, by placing [square brackets] around all of our additions, and substituting any deletions with bracketed ellipses [...]; and
make sure that, after our alterations, the original meaning of the quoted materials has not been significantly altered (see below).

For example, to signal that a typo in the quote is not our own, we can use [sic]:

The brown fox jump [sic] over the lazy dog.

Or we could correct the typo:

The brown fox jump[s] over the lazy dog.

For an example of how we might edit a quote to fit our own sentence structure, consider the following quote from the original:

In this article, I shall argue that Peter and Madonna is a product of this frustration. Noting the chronological concurrence of the text with Malherbe’s torturous composition of the “memoir notes” in the post-war and post-Schwob years, I propose that it constitutes not merely an extended ludic interlude from memoir drafting, but an autofictional text which experiments with alternative ways to translate a life — or two intertwined lives — into textual form.

(Frost 2025, ¶3)

Which we might incorporate into our own text as follows:

⚠ Good Practice, but better below

In her own, similar case study, Frost “[n]ot[es] the […] concurrence of [Suzanne Malherbe’s Peter and Madonna] with [the] tortuous composition of” her so-called “memoir notes” (Frost 2025, ¶3).

NB: the above example serves to make a point, and highlights some different types of editorial interventions. A more elegant solution would be:

✨ Best Practice

In her own case study of Suzanne Malherbe’s works, Frost highlights a similar instance of “chronological concurrence” between her incomplete manuscript titled Peter and Madonna, and the “tortuous composition” of her so-called “memoir notes” (Frost 2025, ¶3).

Technically speaking, though, both uses are acceptable.

Quotes within quotes

When we are quoting an author who, in the relevant phrase, is in turn quoting someone else, we can nest quotes within quotes by double and single quotation marks. Double quotes within double quotes become single quotes. Single quotes within single quotes in turn become double quotes. For example, say that we have the following source text:

First, that the document plays a genetic role in our approach to life-writing, rewriting the “set of norms that precede and exceed the subject” surrounding any “work on the self” (Butler 2005, 17).

(Frost 2025, ¶50)

We could incorporate this into our own writing as follows:

✨ Best Practice

As Frost suggests, referring to Judith Butler’s monograph Giving an Account of Oneself (2005): “the document plays a genetic role in our approach to life-writing, rewriting the ‘set of norms that precede and exceed the subject’ surrounding any ‘work on the self’” (Frost 2025, ¶50).

Note that this still requires us to find a way to refer the original source (here: Butler 2005) in the text; be that in the description of the quote (as here), or in the parenthetical reference. Also note that this particular quote ends with a quoted phrase; requiring us to end the quotation with a single quotation mark (to close the nested quote), followed by a double quotation mark (to close the larger citation).

Sometimes, what we’re really interested in is not so much the text of our source (here: Frost 2025), but the text of a quote in our source (here: Butler 2005). If this is the case, your best course of action would be to look up the original, and quote that, directly, instead. This is good research practice: it allows you to double-check that the quote was used correctly; it increases your understanding of the larger academic discussion; it allows you to contextualise the reference more thoroughly; and it may help point you in the direction of more sources that are potentially relevant to your own research. However, it may not always be possible to get a hold of the original text: it may no longer be in print; it may not be archived by the libraries you have access to; etc. In this case, the source you do have access to (here: Frost 2025) can still serve as proof enough to allow you to quote the quoted materials (here: Butler 2005) as long as you make it clear that you are quoting second-hand information. For example:

✨ Best Practice

This is what Judith Butler called “working on the self” in her monograph Giving an Account of Oneself (Butler 2005, 17; qtd. in Frost 2025 ¶50).

Quoting longer citations

When we need to quote a longer span of text to make a more nuanced point about previous research, it may become too long to be included in the running text, and should be presented as a ‘block quote’ instead: formatted with increased margins at the top, bottom, left (and possibly right), and rendered in a smaller font size. Block quotes are typically not surrounded by quotation marks; the block quote format in itself already indicates that the text is lifted from the original source. For that same reason, the in-text parenthetical citation should not be included in the quoted sentence, but placed after the quotation’s last full stop. An elegant way of formatting this, is to put the reference on a separate line, below the quoted text, as such:

✨ Best Practice

In her final paragraph, Frost concludes:

These are provoking and ambitious questions I have resisted the instinct to discuss because they deserve broader treatment outside the confines of this essay. The mere instinct to ask those questions signals the importance of considering the document in the context of other works on her writing desk. That consideration has exposed the very seriousness of Malherbe’s play — and its serious consequences for a potential reader. Therefore, this research has resulted in a digital edition of Peter and Madonna to ensure that the text can reach the readers it means to affect.

(Frost 2025, ¶52)

Some considerations to take into account when you are using a block quote:

APA generally suggests the cut-off point between ‘in-text citation’ and ‘block quote’ to be approximately 40 words.
Where appropriate, you can end the preceding sentence in a colon, or otherwise structure the preceding sentence in a way that allows it to incorporate the quote more naturally into your narrative (as you would with a regular quote). Doing so does not require you to downcase the first quoted word (i.e., remove its initial capital). If you do downcase the first word, this should be indicated with the usual [square brackets] – as you would any other changes you made to the original.
As with regular quotes, always ask yourself what the quote contributes to your text, and larger argument, and whether or not it is necessary for you to quote it in full, to get your point across. Sometimes, quoting a few well-selected phrases would serve your text equally well. You can definitely use block quotes in your writing, but as with all rhetorical devices, using them with moderation increases their effectiveness. Over-reliance on block quotes can make your writing appear lazy, or imply an un-critical attitude towards the source materials.
As noted, the parenthetical reference is not considered as part of the sentence, and should therefore not be followed by a full stop.

A note on respecting the source materials

Quoted words and phrases can easily be taken out of context, and be made to mean or imply things that were never considered in the original source. This should be avoided at all costs, by carefully and critically reading the original source, and making sure your reference remains true to its original meaning. You should also provide additional context to resolve any remaining ambiguities, if only in a footnote.

References

Butler, J. (2005). Giving an Account of Oneself. Fordham Univ. Press.

Frost, K. (2025). Wading Through Memories: Creative Concurrence and Recurrence in Suzanne Malherbe’s Peter and Madonna and the Memoir Notes. Variants. The Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship, (19), 163–188. https://doi.org/10.4000/15do9

Neyt, V. (2025). A Nexus of Worlds: Stephen King’s Concurrent Work on IT, The Talisman, and The Tommyknockers. Variants. The Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship, (19), 189–204. https://doi.org/10.4000/15doa