Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
but the changes should be held to a minimum. Changes of font, particularly addition
of emphasis by changing words to italics, should be explicitly identified, as should
changes of nomenclature.
The expression “[sic]” is used to indicate that an error is from the original quote,
as in “Davis regards it as 'not worty [sic] of consideration' [11]”. It is not polite to
point out such errors, which are insignificant and can be silently corrected; avoid
such use of “[sic]”, and, perhaps, avoid quotes that seem to require it. More rarely
“[sic]” is used to indicate that terminology or jargon is being used in a different way.
Hamad and Quinn (1990) show that “similarity [sic] is functionally equivalent
to identity”; note that similarity in this context means homology only, not the
more general meaning used in this paper.
The long explanation renders the quote pointless.
Hamad and Quinn (1990) show that homology “is functionally equivalent to
identity”.
Moreover, for a short, natural statement of this kind the quotes are not essential.
Hamad and Quinn (1990) show that homology is functionally equivalent to
identity.
Other changes are insertions, replacements, or remarks, delimited by square brack-
ets; and short omissions, represented by ellipses. In strict usage, the ellipses are
themselves placed in square brackets, to make it clear they were not in the original
text.
They describe the methodology as “a hideous mess […] that somehow man-
ages to work in the cases considered [but] shouldn't”.
(Note that an ellipsis consists of three stops, neither more nor less.) Ellipses are
unnecessary at the start of quotes, and at the end of quotes except where they imply
“et cetera” or “and so on”, or where the sentence is left hanging. For long omissions,
don't use an ellipsis; separate the material into two quotations. Material in square
brackets is used for comments or tomake the quote parsewhen read in its newcontext.
Don't mutilate quotations.
According to Fier and Byke such an approach is “simple and …fast, [but]
fairly crude and …could be improved” [8].
It would be better to paraphrase.
Fier and Byke describe the approach as simple and fast, but fairly crude and
open to improvement [8].
Long quotations, and quotation in full of material such as algorithms or figures,
require permission from the publisher and from the author of the original. (Plagiarism
Words can be quoted to show that they are inadequately defined.
