Some Basic Rules of Writing for the One-Page Papers

1. Titles of books, poems, songs, and other complete works are italicized; they are not set off in quotation marks. Titles of chapters and essays are enclosed in quotation marks.

2. When citing the texts, use paraphrasing rather than quotes; use short quotes rather than long (2+lines) quotes.

3. In punctuating quotations, if you introduce the quotation with the word “that” (what Turabian calls a run-in quotation), punctuate it like this:

She said that “experience is the basis of all art.”

Note:

·       no punctuation/commas before or after the word “that”

·       no capitalization of the first word of the quote (unless, of course, it is a proper name)

·       your whole sentence must be grammatically correct even if you only quote a sentence fragment

4. If you introduce the quote with a verb such as “said,” “wrote,” “argued,” or “maintained,” without the word “that,” punctuate your sentence like this:

She said, “All experience is valuable.”

Note:

·       A comma follows the introductory verb

·       A space follows the comma

·       The first word of the quote is capitalized whether it was originally the first word of a sentence or not

·       The quote is a grammatically complete sentence or part of a grammatically complete sentence.

 

5. Never begin or end a quote with ellipsis points (Chicago Style Rule). Only use ellipses in the middle of quotes to indicate that you left something out of the original passage. Chicago Style says the assumption is that a write who quotes material always took the quoted material out of an existing context; thus ellipses are superfluous.

 

6. Use brackets—[ ]—to enclose a word or words that you added to the original quote.