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APA Style Guide: 7th Edition

Formatting: Quotations

Direct quotations are copied word for word from an original source; they can be a useful and powerful way to support your ideas. It's good practice to use direct quotes sparingly in academic writing, and only under certain circumstances.

The following guidelines from the University of Toronto recommend using direct quotes in cases where:

  • the language of the passage is particularly elegant, powerful or memorable
  • you want to confirm the credibility of your argument by enlisting the support of an authority on your topic
  • the passage is worthy of further analysis
  • you wish to argue with someone else's position in considerable detail

For more information regarding how to use direct quotations as well as examples of their use, please refer to the NIC Library & Learning Commons Plagiarism guide. 

  • Use single quotation marks around a quote that falls within a quote unless the quote falls within a block quotation
  • Any punctuation that is part of a quote within a quote should be placed inside the single quotation marks

EXAMPLE:

"When you are quoting from a resource and that quote includes an internal quote, 'use single quotation marks for the internal quote!' and include punctuation for that internal quote within the single quotation marks."

  • When quoting, always provide the author, year and specific page or paragraph number in the citation
  • Incorporate the quote within the text
  • Enclose the quotation with double quotation marks
  • Include the full citation in the same sentence as the quotation

Examples:

Always reference the page number when it is provided:

  1. Lougheed and Smith (2019) stated that the practitioners were "incorrigible" (p. 47).
  2. "Blake and Longmen were incorrigible - and everyone knew it" (Lougheed & Smith, 2019, p. 47).

Reference the paragraph when a page number is not provided:

  1. According to Cleveland et al. (2016), "consider this a direct quote" (para. 3).
  2. "Consider this a direct quote" (Cleveland et al., 2016, para. 3).

 

 

If a quote consists of 40+ words:

  • do not use quotations marks to enclose the quote
  • insert the quote as a block of text separate from the main body of your paper
  • indent the block .5 inches from the left margin
  • double-space the entire block quotation and do not add any space above or below it
  • place the in-text citation after the ending punctuation of the block quote OR cite the author and date in the narrative before the quotation

Block quotation with parenthetical citation

Researchers have studied how people talk to themselves::

Inner speech is a paradoxical phenomenon. It is an experience that is central to many people’s everyday lives, and yet it presents considerable challenges to any effort to study it scientifically. Nevertheless, a wide range of methodologies and approaches have combined to shed light on the subjective experience of inner speech and its cognitive and neural underpinnings. (Alderson-Day & Fernyhough, 2015, p. 957)

Block quotation with narrative citation 

Flores et al. (2018) described how they addressed potential researcher bias when working with an intersectional community of transgender people of colour:

Everyone on the research team belonged to a stigmatized group but also held privileged identities. Throughout the research process, we attended to the ways in which our privileged and oppressed identities may have influenced the research process, findings, and presentation of results. (p. 311)
 

Direct quotations can be changed under certain circumstances, some of which require you to explain the change, and some of which do not.

Changes not requiring explanation

  • You may change the capitalization of the first letter to fit the context of the sentence in which the quotation appears
  • Some punctuation marks at the end of a quotation may be changed as long as meaning is not changed 
  • Single quotation marks may be changed to double quotation marks and vice versa
  • Footnote or endnote callouts can be omitted

Changes requiring explanation

  • Use an ellipsis (three periods in a row "...") to indicate that you have omitted words
  • Use four periods (a period plus and ellipsis ". ...") to show a sentence break within omitted material, such as when a quotation includes the end of one sentence and the beginning of another
  • Use square brackets, not parentheses, to enclose material such as an addition or explanation you have inserted in a quotation
  • If you want to emphasize a word or phrase in a quotation use italics. Immediately after the italicized words insert [emphasis added] within square brackets. 

For more information visit the "changes to quotations" page on the APA website