Citing Quoted Information
What is quoted information?
When you take ideas from a source, it is better practice to paraphrase. See this paraphrasing practice for more information on paraphrasing.
However, sometimes you may need to quote rather than change the words. If you take the same:
- words
- table (without making any changes)
- figures
- or any other information that was not changed at all
Then you will need to cite the information slightly differently. You will need to be more specific with where you found it.
Formatting citations for direct quotes
To format citations, we follow this pattern:
(Author, Year, Page)
Don’t forget to also add quotation marks ” ” around any text that you copy/pasted. Let’s look at some examples:
- Reviewing thirteen cross-sectional studies, the authors concluded that “vaping appears to be as dangerous as, if not more so than, the standard cigarettes” (Hook et. al, 2021, p. 3).
- Derrick contested this claim, responding, “It appears that these researchers failed to consider the impact of childhood events when drawing this conclusion” (2016, p. 1230).
- In their most recent paper, Hartmen and Byrne (2010) concluded that it was “very promising” (p. 35) and pledged to follow up “at a later date” (p. 36).
- Symmons (2022) concluded by saying, “Until we can all agree on a way forward, we will be stuck at the status quo” (p. 678).
Practice I
Other Situations
No page numbers
Common for websites. Write “para.” instead of page and count down the number of paragraphs. If there are many paragraphs, you can include the section then paragraph.
(Smith, 2020, para. 16).
Multiple pages
Sometimes a quote isn’t on just one page but spans across two. You might then write “pp.” instead of “p.” to show that it’s a page range that you are citing from.
(Smith, 2020, pp. 3-4).
Omitting some information
Sometimes you only want pieces of a quote. You can use “…” to skip a few words between sentences.
The author stated that it was “Shocking… and very welcome.” (Smith, 2020, p. 3)
Changing some words inside the quote
You might need to change a pronoun or add explanation to help the quote stand on its own. You then would add [ ] square brackets around the changed parts. Make sure not to change the meaning. Often paraphrasing is simpler.
Original quote: “I love this treatment and prescribe it to help with my patients’ blood pressure”
Your quote: The physician claimed “[they] love [the] treatment and prescribe it to help with [their] patients’ blood pressure” (Wooten, 2019, para. 2).
Quoting videos/audio
You might take the words from a video or audio to include in your writing. If you haven’t paraphrased them, then you should cite the information as a direct quote. Include the time stamp instead of page number.
(Smith, 2000, 2:35)
Long quotes (40+ words)
These are very different from shorter quotes:
1. Don’t use quotation marks around them.
2. Start them on a new line and add a 1/2-inch indent on the left side.
3. Put the citation AFTER the period and include another period after the citation.
4. Start a new paragraph after the quote.