Accuracy

Rule # 1 for quotations: get the words right. Before I started teaching I wouldn't have thought I'd need to say this, but a great many students seem to think it's okay to get the gist of a quotation, and not sweat every apostrophe. That is not in fact okay: like it or not, academics are fanatics about word-for-word accuracy.

　　What if the original quoted passage has a mistake in it? Reproduce the misspelled word, and, to notify the reader that this mistake occurred in the original, follow it with the word sic in brackets （it's Latin for thus or so, here signifying "it was like this already"）:

　　Halder does his argument no credit when he opines, "History shows that men are more intelligent then [sic] women" （34）.

　　If you need to change anything else in the quotation or add some comment within it, indicate your change or addition by using square brackets [this], not parentheses （not this）.

　　Sometimes word-for-word accuracy by itself may lead to an unclear quotation. In the following sentence from an original text, to what do the pronouns them and themselves refer?

SOURCE

　　I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.

　　Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ed. Miriam Brody [London: Penguin, 1992], 156）.

　　Women, it's not too hard to figure out, but if you don't explain this readers will hit the pronouns like unexpected speedbumps. You may use brackets to insert an explanation:

　　Mary Wollstonecraft does not wish to reverse the sexual balance of power, but to move from domination to autonomy: "I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves" （156）.

　　Don't get bracket-happy. Use them sparingly. A better general technique for explaining terms in quotations is to introduce them or explain them after the fact, depending on how your argument unfolds and what will work best for the reader, in your judgment （for more on this see Integrating quotations below）:

　　Mary Wollstonecraft wants women to strive for autonomy, not domination: "I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves" （156）.

　　Note that 18th-century usage permitted Wollstonecraft to use a semi-colon where we would require a comma. The quotation does not try to correct this.