User:Tony1/Quotation workshop

Here is an unusual case where opening ellipsis points are essential for context and meaning.

Wikipedia articles abound in direct quotations. Managing the inclusion of wordings from sources requires skill. This workshop includes a series of show-and-tell exercises in which you can test your skill in formatting and manipulating quoted material in running prose.

There are four guiding principles to good quoting practice:

1. be true to the intended meaning in the source;
2. integrate quotations into the article text as smoothly as possible;
3. brevity is usually desirable;
4. try to shield the readers from poor English in the source.

There are three basic devices for manipulating quoted text to achieve good practice:

• shifting the quotation marks to manipulate the boundary between direct quotation and paraphrase;
• using square brackets within a quotation to insert paraphrased text, for brevity, to supply the larger context, or to correct or disambiguate wording that may be unclear to the readers;
• the insertion of ellipsis points to indicate that original text has been omitted;

The way quoted material is embedded into a sentence often involves introductory text, punctuation, and/or a speech verb.

Exercises

Each exercise presents an instance in which quoting practice could be improved. Try to identify how to make the improvements before looking at the hint.

Exercise A

Lueders commented that the track "... [is] definitely the fastest in the world, and that's what makes it so difficult".

Hints

• Both ellipsis points and square brackets?
• The introduction needs tweaking.

Solution

Lueders commented that said the track is "definitely the fastest in the world, and that's what makes it so difficult".

Explanation

• "Said/says" is the default speech tag; a word such as "commented" can be laboured.
• Consider removing "that" for smoothness; the quotation marks make it perfectly clear what is directly quoted.
• Avoid ellipsis dots at the start of a quotation, unless it starts with an upper-case letter and you need to show it's drawn from the middle of a sentence.
• The square brackets are redundant. Take "is" out of the quotation and it's paraphrased anyway.

Exercise B

In 50 years, this would probably lead to "a cultural situation similar to the one in the Middle Ages, where [...] the writer was lost".

• "Writer" is clearly the wrong word. "Authorship" might be a good replacement, but in fact, you work out from the context that the unusual term "authoriality" is the solution. The source is already a translation into English, which draws our attention to the likelihood of such glitches.

Hint

Take advantage of the fact that the ellipsis points are next to the word you need to change.

Solution

In 50 years, this would probably lead to "a cultural situation similar to the one in the Middle Ages, where [authoriality] was lost".

Explanation

This is much neater than retaining the ellipsis points and using square brackets to substitute the correct word.

Exercise C

Kelly concurred, with "any loss of concentration ... [can get you] ... in trouble because the course is so technical.".

Hints

• "With" as a speech tag casts her utterance as a physical action ("Kelly responded with a blow to the head").
• You'd rather "into trouble" than the colloquial "in trouble"; any way of fixing this for the readers?
• The ellipsis points are again an issue.
• The two periods juddering against each other?

Solution

Kelly concurred: "any loss of concentration [can get you into] trouble because the course is so technical".successfully.

Explanation

• Where the opportunity presents itself, use puncutation to minimise the intro.
• The ellipsis points are redundant if using square brackets.
• We slipped "in" into the [paraphrase] and changed it to the correct "into". This is desirable where the speaker's intended meaning is preserved.
• Whether the house style is internal or external quotation-final punctuation (MoS says external), don't allow two periods to jostle: remove one.

Exercise D

Pascal, a paid MediaWiki developer, has outlined proposals to untangle the specifically MediaWiki-only code from those sections. "Overall", he wrote, "it would be great if we could take a look at this and other ways to better share our work with non-MediaWiki projects."

Hint

We know who is being quoted, from the opening sentence ("has outlined proposals").

Solution

Pascal, a paid MediaWiki developer, has outlined proposals to untangle the specifically MediaWiki-only code from those sections. "Overall", he wrote, "it "Overall, it would be great if we could take a look at this and other ways to better share our work with non-MediaWiki projects."

Explanation

"He wrote" is redundant. You'd need to check the original to see whether there is a comma after "Overall". You could introduce the direct quotation with a colon, if it suits: "... from those sections: "Overall, it ...".

Exercise A

Hint

Solution

successfully.

Explanation