Quotation marks with direct quotations

Direct quotations of a person’s words, whether spoken or written, must be in quotation marks.

Example sentence: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay “Self-Reliance.”

Do not use quotation marks around indirect quotations. An indirect quotation reports someone’s ideas without using that person’s exact words. In academic writing, indirect quotation is called paraphrase or summary.

Example sentence: Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that consistency for its own sake is the mark of a narrow-minded person.

Sometimes you quote only a phrase within an indirect quotation.

Example sentence: Emerson was not criticizing all consistent behavior or thinking: he was concerned only with a “foolish consistency.”

Exercises:

Quotation marks 1

Quotation marks 2

Related topics:

Periods and commas with quotation marks

Colons and semicolons with quotation marks

Question marks and exclamation points with quotation marks

Quotation marks for titles of works

Introducing quotations