If an ellipsis leads into a statement, should the first letter of that statement begin with a capital letter? Such as “…He thought not.” Or? “…he thought not.”
Which is the correct way? - Jinx
If you are expressing your own thought, abridged, then absolutely begin what follows an ellipsis with a capital letter.
If you are rendering an abridged quotation, there is a standard way to handle this: Obviously, if the excerpt you quote begins with a capital letter, use it. Otherwise, place the initial letter, by itself, in uppercase inside brackets, to indicate that it was your capitalization, not the author’s. Like this “…[S]he thought not. Rather, she would…” That clearly shows that I’m exhibiting the last half of a compound sentence and bringing in a capital letter to begin my excerpt from a sentence, which in full might have been “Everyone expected her to conform to their wishes, but she thought not.” (Note: it’s recommended not to begin excerpted quotations starting with the letters B, I, or U in this manner on message boards, for obvious reasons.)
Another style note, which is far too often broken by puristic pedants, is that an excerpt which begins with a statement containing a pronoun whose antecedent does not appear in the excerpt should have one of two things done, both involving those bracket inserts: Either substitute the antecedent, within brackets, for the first use of the pronoun; or, preferably, follow the first use of the pronoun by the antecedent, placed in brackets. It is not proper English style to use an excerpted quotation containing a “dangling pronoun” whose antecedent is not given, unless it is clear what the antecedent should be from discussion before or after the quotation.
“He bore his enforced inactivity with ill grace, considering Her Majesty’s Armies led by poltroons while his royal opponent romped the Continent garnering victories.”
You don’t have a clue what’s going on there, except that some guy’s pissed off about being force to stay idle while men he considers no good lead a queen’s armies and the monarch on the other side is getting easy victories, probably in Europe since that’s the commonest use of “the Continent.”
Imagine how much easier that sentence becomes with bracketed clarifications inserted:
“He [Marlborough] bore his enforced inactivity with ill grace, considering Her Majesty’s Armies led by poltroons while his royal opponent [Louis XIV] romped the Continent garnering victories.”
Alternatively, omit the initial “He” and begin the sentence “[Marlborough] bore…”
Or I might use the unclear sentence without bracketed inserts, but follow it immediately with a statement like: “‘He’, of course, is the future Duke of Marlborough, now merely Sir John Churchill and out of Queen Anne’s graces due to a palace spat; ‘his royal opponent’ is Louis XIV of France.”
This is particularly annoying when people quote excerpts from the Bible, or read Scripture aloud, and do it verbatim out of an exaggerated sense of respect for the precise words of translated Scripture, instead of its intent to inform or inspire their readers/listeners. “When they had drawn near Samaria…” as the beginning of a Bible passage is singularly un-useful – who? Abraham and Sarah? the Children of Israel? the Assyrian Army? Jesus and His disciples? a Roman legion? Satan and all the forces of wickedness? Start the &@@&@#@ reading with something that gives your readers/listeners a clue what you’re talking about!
Another point–if a new sentence follows the ellipsis, then use four dots rather than three.
So, along the lines of English style, what about when you switch from the third person to a quote in the first person? It’s common to integrate quotes into the paragraph when writing, and I’ve run into things sorta like this on occasion.
Mr. Brown, who allegedly murdered six schoolchildren on Thursday, claimed that “I have no idea why the police arrested me, when they knew I was in Samarkand on business at the time of the murders!”
I can’t come up with a better example, but I often run into it when quoting journal articles and the like in papers - often it would be tough to rewrite the sentence and set off the quote as normal dialog, but switching every pronoun and verb ending with brackets is gonna make it look like I’m pulling some scam. Leaving it the way it is makes me ill-at-ease, despite having seen it in newspapers from time to time.
There’s nothing in the world wrong with a direct quote; the fault lies in how it’s introduced, which is in the hands of the writer. In the example you cited, simply substitute a comma for the “that” immediately preceding the quotation, and you have a quite clear sentence. (When something of this sort is read aloud, one normally changes tone or inflection to indicate a quotation of a different speaker than the repertorial news-deliverer.)
I’m not sure if this is that standard. Where my own practice would differ is in the need for ellipsis points (3 dots) before the square brackets. Thus, from my own writings:
It is indeed the likely refusal of other people to accept the truth of CDA that leads to the bleakness of Fairclough’s (1992a, 240) almost apocalyptic conclusion to his book Discourse and Social Change:
[T]here are possibilities for analysts to exercise some control over the use of their results. But I think it would be misleading to end upon too optimistic a note. If technologization of discourse does gather steam (eg (context-free) interview/counselling skills training), as I have predicted, discourse analysts will be hard-pressed to prevent their well-intentioned interventions being appropriated by those with the power, resources, and the money.
Regarding rendering quotations orally, technically the shift is to a different (usually) higher “key” (by technically, I mean that’s the word commonly used by phoneticians to describe such a shift). Of course, another signalling device (this time paralinguistic rather than prosodic) to show that you’re quoting someone is to pause before the quote.
And then there are the gestures (or kinesic cues) such as might be employed by a David Brent (of The Office fame), vis-a-vis making quotation marks in the air with your fingers.
You’re right of course, and I couldn’t find a good example of it for the question, but I’ve run into situations in which it would be hard to set a quote off with commas. I guess the general advice is just to try to rewrite in order to do so?
Polycarp wrote:
“(Note: it’s recommended not to begin excerpted quotations starting with the letters B, I, or U in this manner on message boards, for obvious reasons.)”
Really? What’s that about? Does it trigger a smiley or something?
Whoosh? It triggers bold, italic, and underlining, respectively.
Roger is of course right here. Leading ellipsis points are totally optional, and omitted by many of the best stylists.
Your pausal and kinesic points are well taken. I don’t know if I’d assert “usually” with regard to a higher key – definitely a clear shift to a different pitch than one’s “normal” speaking voice is fairly standard. Anyone who does this professionally (e.g., a newscaster) who would care to comment?
I don’t think a newscaster would have cause to do this, as the practice of changing into another voice would be seen as taking the mickey in a news bulletin, I think!
However, I note that your emphasis was on professional (and that newscaster was only an example). And I agree, an actor would be able to provide a good insight into their own practice.
My own feeling is that the default key change would be higher - not least because the bit you’re going to quote is often of the nature of a punchline - but a lower key change would be possible, and appropriate, if, say, you were going to speak as a giant.
WITH A BOOMING VOICE!
Because they’re redundant if you also use square brackets, of course. The economy principle of good style. (In case jinx is still tuning in.)