Five Errors in Treating Quotations

When you quote another person, be sure to avoid these pitfalls of quotation format.

1. Sometimes, LaPierre said, “The only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
In this sentence, the writer has inserted the word sometimes, though the speaker did not utter it verbatim, into the sentence because the speaker intimated it in other words. Because it wasn’t actually spoken, however, it is placed outside the quotation marks. But the sentiment begins with sometimes, not the, so the quotation becomes a partial one and the is not capitalized: “Sometimes, LaPierre said, ‘the only thing to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.’”

2. Alfred North Whitehead wrote that “The best education is to be found in gaining the utmost information from the simplest apparatus.”
A similar rule applies to an attribution (“so and so said/wrote/agreed”) that leads into the quotation without intervening punctuation; the quotation becomes part of a framing sentence, and the first word of the original quotation is not capitalized: “Alfred North Whitehead wrote that ‘the best education is to be found in gaining the utmost information from the simplest apparatus.’”

3. “We knew,” Jones says, “that the company would eventually become a major competitor, but, without a relationship, we thought we were in danger of not achieving ubiquity.”
In this sentence, the writer interjects the attribution into the midst of the quotation, which is standard procedure. However, the attribution should be delayed until a break between two clauses: “‘We knew that the company would eventually become a major competitor,’ Jones says, ‘but, without a relationship, we thought we were in danger of not achieving ubiquity.’”

4. “Schools may be the last place,” Smith said, “where the government is funding us to gather together into public forums to have conversations. We have got to protect that.”
This sentence, like the previous example, suffers from premature attribution. Because there is no natural break in the sentence, the attribution should be inserted between the two sentences: “‘Schools may be the last place where the government is funding us to gather together into public forums to have conversations,’ Smith said. ‘We have got to protect that.’”

5. “In many ways, it’s like the cowboys against the Indians. But the cowboys are fully backed by the state,” he said of the current situation.
In this case, the attribution is delayed too long. In a quotation of two or more sentences, as in the previous example, place it between the first and second sentences: “‘In many ways, it’s like the cowboys against the Indians,’ he said of the current situation. ‘But the cowboys are fully backed by the state.’” (Note, too, how this arrangement strengthens the sentence because it ends with a serious punchline rather than a dry attribution.)