Anonymous Attribution
Crediting a work or quotation to an unnamed author, and doing it honestly.
'Anonymous' as an attribution means one specific thing: the author is unknown or deliberately unnamed. It is a statement about the state of the evidence, not a decorative label to hang on a line whose source you did not look for.
In citation practice, 'Anonymous' is used as the author only when the work itself declares it; otherwise the title moves into the author position and the entry is alphabetised by that title.
For quotations, the honest forms are graded: 'Anonymous' when the text is genuinely authorless, 'traditional' or 'proverbial' when it belongs to shared oral culture, and 'attributed to X' when a name circulates without a verified source.
Common mistake: writing 'Anonymous' beneath a quotation you simply could not trace. Say 'source unverified' instead — it is accurate, and it invites correction rather than closing the question.
“Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.”
Keep reading the glossary
The act of naming the original speaker or writer of a quote.
Assigning a quote to the wrong person — the most common error in quotation.
An organisation credited as the author of a work when no individual is named.
A quote attributed to a famous person that they almost certainly never said.