76 PRS Proofreading and Editing Service PhD Experts • All Academic Areas • Fast Turnaround • High Quality should be added after the closing quotation mark unless they are present in the source you’re quoting, in which case they should be included within the quotation. Minor changes in punctuation and capitalisation can be made to a quotation if the changes are necessary to make the quotation work effectively within the grammar and structure of your own sentence. So, for example, if you’re quoting a whole sentence, you can change the initial capital to a lowercase letter: According to Smith (2010), ‘the results did not reveal the trend of rapid deterioration noted in previous studies’ (p. 222, where the first ‘The’ bore an uppercase ‘T’ in the original). These minor changes do not require the use of square brackets. Beyond minor changes in punctuation and capitalisation in quotations, any quoted material should be provided in your paper in the exact same format as it appears in the source. When you need to add something significant to a quoted passage to make it work in your own sentence, you should use square brackets around the added material: Smith (2010, p. 222) was surprised that his ‘results did not reveal the trend of rapid deterioration [because this trend had been] noted in previous studies.’ An ellipsis, on the other hand, should be used when you delete words from the middle of a quotation: Smith (2010, p. 222) was surprised that his ‘results did not reveal the trend…noted in previous studies.’ An ellipsis is not required, however, at the beginning or end of a quotation (I use ellipses in those positions in some examples, not quotations, in this Guide simply to clarify relevant formats). It is always best to change as little as possible in a quotation; after all, you’re presumably quoting the words of another author because they serve your present purpose. Long quotations (40 words or more is a common guideline) are best indented as block quotations: these start on a new line, are noticeably indented on the left-hand side, and do not require quotation marks. PARt II: PRePARIng, PResentIng And PolIsHIng YoUR woRk