In Earth Science, don't use quotation marks to beg forgiveness for slang words, e.g. it was "awesome"; or colloquial expressions, e.g. All the scientists treated the conference as "a breath of fresh air". Avoid slang and colloquialisms.

Sometimes quotation marks can be used to show that you don't necessarily agree with the definition, for example: Some people take "global warming" to mean "man-made global warming". If you use quotation marks for this purpose, make sure you don't use them too often. Overuse of quotation marks in a text is as annoying as somebody continuously painting quotation marks in the air when you're having a conversation.

In Earth Science, actual quotations (i.e. directly quoting somebody else's words) should be used very sparingly. We prefer to see your own words, with references to other people's work embedded in the text.

For example:

New ocean crust is transported away from the ridge axis as soon as it is created (Marshak, 2005).

rather than

As Marshak (2005) says, "As soon as it forms, new oceanic crust moves away from the ridge axis".

or

"As soon as it forms, new oceanic crust moves away from the ridge axis" (Marshak, 2005).

However, if you do find you have to quote, the following rules will help:

• Always make sure that you have opening quotation marks and closing ones. If you don’t, the marker will struggle to work out which words are yours and which belong to the quote.
• Don't change the punctuation in the quotation itself: leave it as the original author intended.
• Never put in a quotation without attributing it, i.e. putting in a reference so that the reader can verify your source.