Pull Attribution
The convention of citing only the author's name when quoting in casual writing.
Pull attribution is the casual convention of attaching only a name (and perhaps a year) to a quotation, rather than a full citation. It is the standard form for graphics, social posts, and most online quoting: 'Be the change you wish to see in the world. — Mahatma Gandhi'.
The convention works for famous lines that the reader will recognise — but it is also the format that fuels misattribution, because a name is easy to swap, and the more famous the name, the harder it is to dislodge once attached.
Where it matters, pull attribution should be paired with a checkable source: book title, year, or speech. On Mr. B Quotes, we treat unsourced pull attribution as a draft, not a publication.
“— Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'Self-Reliance', 1841”
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.
A short, vivid extract from a longer speech, designed to be repeated by news media.
An adjective describing a phrase, person, or work that lends itself naturally to being quoted.