Guidelines for quoting

  • indicate quotations by typing single inverted commas around the exact words, phrase or sentence:

Cadman and Topping state that 'the architect is responsible for ensuring that all the necessary statutory approvals have been obtained, such as planning permission and building regulations'. This means that the architect………

  • short quotations, up to 40-50 words in length, can be included in the body of the textusing single inverted commas:

Ridley surmises that 'more than most men, Henry VIII was a product of his time. Only an early sixteenth-century King could have behaved in the way that he did'. What Ridley means by this is that...

  • longer quotations should be indented in a separate paragraph, with no inverted commas:

Phillips and Havely argue that:

Chaucer's own judiciousness about when and where and how densely to place words of French and Latin origins - many of which still had a more learned or exotic air than modern readers immediately realize - amid familiar words is unrivalled among English poets. He can create a courtly French or Ovidian Latin manner in English without simply piling up French or Latin words.
  • if part of the quotation is omitted, this can be indicated using three dots inside square brackets:

Kershaw states that 'it has been frequently claimed [...] that Hitler was not a racial antisemite during his stay in Vienna'.

  • quotations within quotations should be placed within double inverted commas:

Macy and Bonnemaison argue that 'the question of the"national character"of architecture has led a number of theorists [...] to turn to what we call now vernacular buildings in their search for deeper principles which underlay the architecture of any particular"nation"'. The architectural meaning of 'vernacular' can be...

  • a reference for the quotation, including the page number, may need to be given in a footnote at the bottom of the page, depending on the referencing system you are using

1David Cadman and Rosalyn Topping, Property Development (London: Spon Press, 1991), p. 221.

2Jasper Ridley, Henry VIII (London: Constable, 1984), p. 18.
3Helen Phillips and Nick Havely, Chaucer's Dream Poetry (London: Longman, 1997), p. 43.
4Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris (London: Allen Lane, 1998), p. 67.

5Ian Christine Macy and Sarah Bonnemaison, Architecture and Nature - Creating the American Landscape (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 41.