Friday, March 1, 2013

Examples of Quotations and Ellipses



In this post, there are examples of quotations from an article on a website, and from a report published online in portable document format (PDF). Some longer examples include ellipses, or removals of words. There are short references in parentheses in the body of this post, and complete references at the end to point out the sources of the quotations.


Quotation within a quotation

In the passage below that I've quoted from the article on a website, Clark (2012) had quoted parts of the report (EF English First [EF], 2012). I've highlighted in yellow the parts of the report that Clark had quoted, both in my quotation from the website (below) and in another quotation from the original report (farther below).

". . . English will maintain and grow its dominance, moving from 'a marker of the elite' in years past to 'a basic skill needed for the entire workforce, in the same way that literacy has been transformed in the last two centuries from an elite privilege into a basic requirement for informed citizenship'" (Clark, 2012, ¶1, after EF, 2012).

Please note that Clark had combined phrases from two sentences in the original report into a single sentence structure of her own. The ellipsis, three spaced periods (". . . "), at the beginning of my quotation from the website (above) shows where I've shortened Clark's sentence.

However, I have replaced double quotation marks that were in the passage from Clark's article above with single quotations to show the beginnings and ends of Clark's quotations within my quotation (above). Replacing double quotation marks with single quotation marks indicates quotations within quotations.



  • Double quotation marks show the beginnings and ends of my quotations from the webiste (above) and from the report itself (below).
  • Single quotation marks within the double quotation marks above show the beginnings and ends of the parts of the original report that Clark had quoted.



Long quotation of the original

In the following quotation of the original passage from the EF report, and in the quotations with ellipses below that, please note that there are only double quotation marks.


"Today English proficiency can hardly be thought of as an economic advantage at all. It is certainly no longer a marker of the elite. Instead it is increasingly becoming a basic skill needed for the entire workforce, in the same way that literacy has been transformed in the last two centuries from an elite privilege into a basic requirement for informed citizenship" (EF, 2012, p. 12).


Original with ellipses


In both of the shortened quotations below, please note that ellipsis still shows where I've cut words out, and that I've shortened the quotations in ways that preserve grammatical units. Please also note that square brackets show where I've added words for clarification.



"Today English proficiency . . . is certainly no longer a marker of the elite. Instead it is increasingly becoming a basic skill needed for the entire workforce, . . . [and] a basic requirement for informed citizenship" (EF, 2012, p. 12).


"Today English proficiency . . . is increasingly becoming a basic skill needed for the entire workforce, . . . [and] a basic requirement for informed citizenship" (EF, 2012, p. 12).



Bits of the original recontextualized

In a message for prospective students that I prepared yesterday, I shared EF's assertions that English is not only "a basic skill needed for the entire workforce," but also "a basic requirement for informed citizenship" (EF, 2012, p. 12).



References


Clark, Dorie. (2012). English - The Language of Global Business? Retrieved February 28, 2012, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/dorieclark/2012/10/26/english-the-language-of-global-business/


EF Education First [EF]. (2012). EF English Proficiency Index 2012 [PDF]. [n.p.]: EF Education First. Retrieved February 28, 2013, from http://www.ef.com/__/~/media/efcom/epi/2012/full_reports/ef-epi-2012-report-master-lr-2


[625 words]


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