quotations in project reports and assignments

Quotations

A quotation is a word for word reproduction of the written or oral work of others. Using a quotation in your project may be a useful way to express an important point, perhaps in a precise, pertinent or striking way. However, remember to use quotations carefully; if you use too many quotations, your text may be characterised by too much “cut and paste”.

Remember to clearly indicate when your quotation begins and ends.  Short quotations (of less than 40 words) are incorporated into the text and enclosed with double quotation marks. Longer quotations are indicated by indention, as freestanding blocks of text without quotation marks. Both types of quotations must be followed by a source reference.

As previously mentioned, a quotation is a word for word reproduction – and this must include any misplaced commas or misspellings included in the original text (if your quotation includes any errors, you may choose to include [sic] which indicates that you are aware of the textual error). You are allowed to change the first letter of a quotation to an uppercase or a lowercase letter, and you may change the comma or full stop at the of a quotation to make it fit with the syntax of the text in which it is incorporated. Any other changes made to quotations must be clearly indicated. When you omit text from the original source, you must indicate this by including three spaced ellipsis points within the quotation. In general, you do not need to use an ellipsis when you omit text in the beginning or end of a quotation. Any added words or the omission/addition of highlighted words must be indicated in brackets.

Example (please note: though this is not the case in the example below, the text must be indented):

Citater skal være få og velvalgte. . . . Det afgørende ved et citat er som sagt at det bliver brugt til noget. Din tekst hvori citatet bruges, skal jo have sit eget formål eller budskab, ikke bare fremlægge hvad andre har sagt. . . . Skal man fx sammenligne to tekster, så skal man ikke bare citere en række passager fra hver, men sige noget om forholdet mellem dem. (Rienecker & Jørgensen, 2001, p. 192)