Richard gives a blunt reply: “Chop off his head” (3.1.193).
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| # | Explanation |
| Use a colon to introduce quotations, unless grammar requires a comma. | |
| The grammar of your sentence must fit the grammar of the quotation in tense, number, and so on. If it does not, either alter your own words, or cite a different portion of the source text. | |
| Do not use ellipsis dots ( . . . ) at the beginnings or ends of quotations; use an ellipsis to indicate words omitted from within a quotation. | |
| Place close-quotes before the line or page reference. | |
Omit any final punctuation marks from the citation except for question marks or exclamation marks. If an exclamation mark appeared in the source text, then the proper punctuation would be:
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| Enclose reference information in parentheses. | |
| Cite reference numbers up to 101 like this: 34-37; above 100, repeat only the last two figures: 211-12 (but of course, 398-402 and 99-101). | |
| Use arabic numerals rather than roman numerals for citations of all numbered sections and subsections—books, stanzas, lines and so on: The Faerie Queene 1.6.334-42 or Paradise Lost 4.634-58. | |
| Place final punctuation after close-parentheses to end the sentence. |
This anatomy of a citation borrows heavily from Alan H. Nelson’s example citation in his Instructions for Papers. (Nelson is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley)