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Quoting

When you quote another person’s work you use their exact words, so you must give a full citation including the page number.

There are two main ways of using quotations in your writing.

Short quotes

These can be included in the body of your text and woven into your own sentences. They need to be marked out from your own words in single inverted commas. Double inverted commas should only be used for quotations within quotations.

  • Cottrell (2008, p.147) describes the Internet as 'a wide interconnecting set of computers'. These computers operate on a global scale...

 

Such quotes can even be split within your own sentence, as long as they are marked out clearly:

  • Cottrell (2008, p. 147) points out that 'there is no owner or central executive for the Internet', stating that instead there are 'some organizations which try to keep it running smoothly'. It could be argued that this makes the Internet a truly democratic medium.

 

Longer quotes

Quotes longer than two lines are indented and so don’t need single inverted commas:

  • The Internet can be seen as a democratic form of communication. There is no owner or central executive for the Internet: it is just a wide, interconnecting set of computers, with some organizations which try to keep it running smoothly (Cottrell, 2008, p. 147).