When to quote:
Inserting direct quotations from either primary or secondary texts should be done sparingly, to enhance and underline your point rather than make your point for you.


Formatting guidelines:

Quotations should NEVER be italicised (unless italicised in the original source, in which case the word [sic] can be used to show that these were the original author's italics). Nor should quotations be set out in a different font from the rest of the essay. Quotations should feel part of the flow of the essay, not set apart from it.

Short quotations: primary sources

When you refer to, or quote from, an ancient text, follow the standard conventions for that author: Homer, Iliad, 1.1-6; Sophocles, Antigone 35-46; Plato, Republic 355a-356e.
If your essay is about one text, after the first reference there is no need to keep repeating the name of the text:

Put the details of the translation you are using into the bibliography. See the bibliography section of this website.

Short quotations: secondary sources

Quotations fewer than forty words should be kept within the text, enclosed in single inverted commas and
referenced through the Harvard (author/date) system, with the full stop coming after the closing bracket of the reference. When you are referencing an idea, you don't need page numbers. If you are inserting a direct quote, you need a page number, and can either use, for example, p.34, pp.34-35, or put a colon after the publication date, for example, 1990: 34, 1990: 34-35.

Double inverted commas are reserved for quotations within quotations.

N.B. Always make sure that you have an opening quotation mark and a closing one, both for single quotation marks and double ones - i.e. if you have a quotation within a quotation, remember to close off the double quotation marks even if that means two sets of quotation marks, one double and one single, appearing next to each other, like this: " '. If you don’t close your quotation marks properly, the marker will struggle to identify which are the quoted words.

Longer quotations: primary and secondary sources
Quotations of over forty words (around 3 lines) should be used very sparingly. If you really do have to use a quotation this long, it should be separated from the text both above and below by a blank line, indented on both sides and typed in single spacing. Such quotations should NOT be enclosed in quotation marks. Indenting is enough. When quoting poems, respect the line breaks of the original.

Removing words from quotations: primary and secondary sources
If you want to remove words from quotations - perhaps because the middle bit of the quotation is unnecessary for your purposes - you must show you have done this with ... (ellipses).

Ellipses are not necessary at the beginning or end of a quotation.

Inserting words into a quotation: primary and secondary sources
If you have to insert a word because something doesn't quite make sense or you want to be absolutely clear, you show that with square brackets.