Brackets in Quotes
Square brackets mark editorial changes inside a quotation — clarifications, edits, or [sic].
Square brackets inside a quotation mark any change the quoting writer has made to the original wording. Common uses include clarifying a pronoun ('[Lincoln] arrived'), inserting an explanatory word, adjusting tense or capitalisation to fit the surrounding sentence, and flagging an original error with [sic].
The rule is transparency. Anything inside the quotation marks that is not in the original must be inside brackets, so the reader can see exactly what is the source and what is the editor's intervention.
Removing words is marked with an ellipsis (…), not brackets. Adding words is marked with brackets, not parentheses, because parentheses inside a quotation could be confused with the author's own parenthetical asides.
“"He [Lincoln] believed the union would endure."”
Keep reading the glossary
Latin for 'thus' — used in quotes to mark an error reproduced from the original.
Three dots that mark words omitted from a quotation.
A passage repeated verbatim from a written or spoken source, with attribution.
A long quotation set off as its own indented paragraph, without quotation marks.