Verbatim
Word-for-word — quoting exactly as the original was spoken or written.
To quote verbatim is to reproduce the source's words exactly, with no addition, subtraction, or smoothing. The Latin root verbum means 'word', and the convention demands the same care a court reporter brings to a transcript: every word, in the same order, with the same punctuation.
Verbatim quotation is the gold standard for journalism, scholarship, and law. It is also harder than it looks. Spoken sentences contain false starts, repetitions, and fragments that read awkwardly on the page; the temptation to 'clean up' is constant, and 'cleaning up' is the first step toward fabrication.
When edits are made for clarity, brackets and ellipses signal them. When they are made without signalling, the quote stops being verbatim and the writer stops being trustworthy.
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Keep reading the glossary
Restating someone's words in your own — credit still required, quotation marks not.
Square brackets mark editorial changes inside a quotation — clarifications, edits, or [sic].
Three dots that mark words omitted from a quotation.
The act of naming the original speaker or writer of a quote.