How to Write a Legal Quotation

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Question marks and exclamation marks are enclosed in quotation marks if they are part of the original quotation: colons, semicolons, and hyphens remain outside the quotation marks. 8. When incorporating quoted material into your own sentence, make sure the result is a grammatically correct sentence. If you add someone else`s words to your own to form a sentence, the combined product should be grammatically correct. To determine if the sentence is grammatically correct, briefly ignore the quotation marks and ask yourself if the sentence would be correct if all the words were yours. Otherwise, you`ll either have to rewrite the part of the sentence you created, or delete the quoted material and use a paraphrase. A paraphrase is the expression of someone else`s ideas in one`s own words. You can paraphrase existing material as long as you provide a correct quote after paraphrasing. You should not put documents paraphrased in quotation marks. The quote indicates that the ideas come from another source; The absence of quotation marks indicates that the words chosen to express these ideas are your own. Well-paraphrased material will change the majority of the keywords in the original source.

If your paraphrase preserves words of particular meaning from the original source, place only those words in quotation marks. 1. Be careful not to quote excessively; Paraphrase whenever possible. New law students sometimes mistakenly believe that they should always quote the words of a judge. After all, according to the reasoning, the judge must know how best to express the law. However, excessive citation is a poor substitute for analysis. Your job as a lawyer is to analyze precedents, not just repeat them. Therefore, your letter should explain to your reader why and how a precedent is important to your client.

You cannot fulfill this important interpretive function simply by chaining quotation marks. In addition, the sequence of case citations and secondary sources tends to result in choppy and incoherent text. It`s usually best to use your own words so that the text you`re writing has a logical progression and consistent style from sentence to sentence. It is not surprising that the authors of these famous words are Justices Harlan, Holmes and Brandeis. Along with Justice Cardozo, Chief Justice Marshall and perhaps a few others, they are considered the legends of American legal history. In persuasive writing, it never hurts to quote a legend. If the quote is long, do not use quotation marks. Instead, present it as a quote at the background. However, keep in mind that quotes are most effective when they are short and used sparingly. If you need to quote something with an error, use sic. 5.

Try to avoid quotation marks of 50 words or more. Many readers skip quotes because they are looking for explanations of the law rather than simple reprints. Do not use quotation marks unless (i) there is simply no other way to write what you are trying to convey (extremely rare) or (ii) the words are so eloquent that paraphrasing them would seriously undermine the persuasion of your text. However, some authors use only one apostrophe if the name is long and contains multiple s. This is not wrong: Explanation: The second example is more desirable because it makes the point of substance with much fewer words. In addition, over-reliance on citations from older sources can result in a text that seems archaic. Use quotation marks only for quotation marks – if the language is particularly strong or needs to be precise. In contrast, indirect quotes summarize or report what someone said. Finally, one of the most common proofreading errors I see is an open quotation mark without its end partner.

The rules for using other punctuation marks in quotation marks are quite simple. If you introduce a quote with a phrase like “He said,” “The record says,” or “As Justice Scalia wrote,” you must use a comma before the quotation marks: (In this case, the nurse does not ask the question; the author of the sentence is.), but stay out of the quotation marks if they are part of your own sentence: 2. When quoting: Avoid freestanding quotes. As a general rule, when quoting, it is better to incorporate this quote into one`s own sentence than to quote an entire sentence from a case.