When quoting a source in an academic paper, do you need to reproduce the author’s capitalization of the first word in your quote?
Example:
Tim Smith writes that, “We must endure their advances” (134).
Say in the original source that “we” began Smith’s sentence and - logically - was capitalized. Now, must I use a capital W or must I use a lowercase w?
Capitalize it. If you wanted to change the case of a word in a quotation, just put that first letter in brackets. If the original text was, “We must endure their advances,” you could say, “Smith implicitly told the crowd, ‘[Although they are stinky, w]e must endure their advances.’”
Thanks. Makes sense - using brackets to signal any alteration of the quoted text.