Q. I’ve read the section on ellipses (CMOS 13.50–58), but I want to verify that what you’re recommending is [space dot space dot space dot space] for a regular ellipsis. Also, I am puzzled by the rationale of putting a period at the end of an incomplete sentence and then an ellipsis before continuing the quotation. As I see it, this doesn’t differentiate between a complete sentence followed by missing text and an incomplete sentence followed by missing text.
Q. Dear CMOS Editors: When omitting the end of a sentence in a quotation, should there be a space after the ellipsis before the closing quotation mark? (1) The Supreme Court ordered the school districts to desegregate “with all deliberate speed. . . .” (2) The Supreme Court ordered the school districts to desegregate “with all deliberate speed. . . .” I see that CMOS 13.55 indicates there should not be a final space, but I’m not sure if that rule applies beyond sentences that are deliberately grammatically incomplete.
Q. I am having trouble understanding the structure of the following example (CMOS 13.55): “Everyone knows that the Declaration of Independence begins with the sentence ‘When, in the course of human events . . .’ But how many people can recite more than the first few lines of the document?” Are these intended to be two sentences? If so, why would there be no closing period after the ellipsis points and closing quotation mark (i.e., before “But”)? If they are one sentence, why would “But” be capitalized? I’m missing something—or misunderstanding, perhaps. Please help.
Q. I seem to find conflicting information, and I can’t figure out the following: is it OK or not to introduce a block quotation with an incomplete sentence (such as “The passage states”) followed by a colon? Or does the sentence have to be a complete sentence?
Q. I’m writing a literature review, and to give an idea of how popular a certain technique is, I’m reporting the number of scholarly articles a particular database brings when the phrase “amperometric detection” and the word “microfluidics” are looked for together in the topic field. Do you have a guideline for how to report the search term in the manuscript? I wrote, “a Web of Knowledge search for (Topic: “amperometric detection” AND “microfluidics”) returns XXX articles.”
Q. When preparing correspondence in which our client’s name is frequently referenced, our firm spells out the first instance of the client’s name, and in parentheses we include the term we will be using throughout the remainder of the letter (the “Company”). My question is, should the word Company be in quotation marks or not?
Q. I am quoting a magazine article. The quoted material is from a speech, so not all of it is pertinent to the way I am condensing it for my readers. My question is about quotation marks. I finish quoting a section and then proceed to the next paragraph, which is a new quote. The new quote does not directly follow the previous paragraph in the original. Do I place quotation marks directly after the previous paragraph? So,
“. . . And I saw more and more people listening.”
“And those old-timers of us started watching it explode . . .”
If it were one continuous statement, I wouldn’t place the quotation marks at the end of the first paragraph, but this is different, since I’m just picking up a different part of the statement quoted above. Should I leave the quote marks at the end of the first paragraph, or should I mislead my reader to think that I quoted exactly as the speaker said it?
Q. In quoting material that appears in the form of a bullet list, can that list be presented as a block quote? If so, does it follow the standard convention where quotation marks are not necessary?
Q. I am a fourth-grade teacher and am currently teaching my students how to insert dialogue into their personal narratives. Can the students insert the dialogue directly into their paragraph, or do they need to create a new paragraph and indent? What is the rule? When looking at novels I see dialogue being written each way.
Q. A manuscript I am editing uses a lengthy extract from a source that uses brackets; in fact the original is sprinkled with unitalicized bracketed “sics.” What do I do? I don’t want readers to think these interjections are added by us! I could say “brackets in original,” but there are a couple of things we have had to add in brackets, too. Perhaps I should put a [ sic] next to every [sic]. (Just kidding.)