Information Literacy MODULE 11 How to quote properly?
How to quote properly?
This module contains another portion of practical information and playful exercises - this time it
is about bibliographic quotation. During your studies, you will probably have to write seminar
papers, scientific texts or diploma (Bachelor’s) theses. These texts have to include lists of
bibliography, references to quotations, quotations from books, paraphrases of more
accomplished authors.
Have you ever heard that the principles of quoting and referring are established by an
internationally valid norm?
Module objective:
• to formulate, in your own words, the difference between quotation and reference in a
scientific text
• to explain the differences between reference methods
• to illustrate correct quoting on concrete documents
• to write, in the correct form, a quotation in the list of bibliography and references in a
text
• to use the “quotation norm” CSN ISO 690 and 690-2 while writing a scientific paper
• to put together a list of bibliography
• to understand the broader connections as regards quoting - quotation ethics, copyright,
quotation indexes, personal card files, author’s rights
Basic terms:
Quote - a literally adopted part of a text from the literary sources used
Quotation - a literal statement or text by someone else included in one’s own document, usually
accompanied by an exact identification of the source of the given statement or text, i.e. a
bibliographic quotation. It is usually distinguished by means of inverted commas, indentation or
a different font
Bibliographic quotation - a source of information for the reader, reviewer or opponent, allowing
identification and back search of a document, or a source of reference to other literary works
List of bibliographic quotations - a list of used literary sources
Contents
1. INTRODUCTION
2. WHY QUOTE
3. QUOTATION NORM
4. THE USE OF QUOTATION IN PRACTICE
5. REFERENCE MANAGERS
6. SUMMARY
Information Literacy MODULE 11 How to quote properly?
1. INTRODUCTION
If you are writing a scientific text (book, journal article, conference contribution, research report,
diploma thesis), you have to observe certain principles and customs set by e.g. your publisher,
university etc. These principles include formal aspects and division of the text itself, use of
figures, indexes, annotations and abstracts, and lists of works used and quoted (both in printed
and electronic form).
For these purposes, there are quotation norms uniting the above mentioned principles or
publishers’ instructions respecting the conventions of a given field or journal. These principles
are then usually included in guidelines for authors while they are preparing their manuscripts, in
particular journals, or they can be found on publishers’ websites.
In the following text, we will deal with the internationally valid “quotation norm”, CSN ISO 690.
2. WHY QUOTE
Writing a scientific text of any type usually requires the inclusion of references to books, articles
or other documents you based your paper on - quotations of concrete passages (copyright) or
the use of author’s ideas as a basis of your own arguments and conclusions.
The so-called quotation ethics has been established for quoting.
2.1 Quotation ethics
We will present 3 basic reasons for quoting:
1. Verification of the given theses - enables the reader to find the theses and works we
based our research and paper on. It enables them to find out where the limits of the
current knowledge are, and thus avoid useless work on something already discovered,
2. Acquisition of a broader context of the given issue - provides the reader with
connections, meaning and purpose of the paper,
3. Protection of intellectual property and copyright.
Quotation ethics further requires the author to:
• publish all the information sources they used,
• indicate adopted passages,
• refer to the original work by means of identification information,
• state the complete source in the list of bibliography according to copyright law
(212/2000).
2.2 What should you avoid?
• Quoting a work you did not use - “encoding” via capacity, without any connections
between our topic and the work.
• Failing to quote a work you did use.
• Self-quotation - quoting one’s own works which are not connected with the new work.
• An inaccurate quoting disabling the work identification.
• Various - incorrect quotations, quoting regardless of the context, the use of an original
text, the use of an original text for other than intended purposes.
What else you may encounter
• Too many quotations decrease the originality of the work.
• A connection of quotation ethics and copyright (the protection of property expressing
unique ideas of authors).
• There is an exception for the use and reproduction of works without the authors’
permission for educational purposes, i.e. for non-profit activities.
Information Literacy MODULE 11 How to quote properly?
• It is difficult to exercise copyright on the Internet, where it is possible to reproduce data
quickly and easily.
• The issue of plagiarism - students try to facilitate their intellectual activities.
2.2.1 Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the use of ideas, words or opinions of someone else without acknowledging their
origin.
Dr. Russel Williams from the Florida State University offers the following advice as regards
unintentional plagiarism:
1. If you are adopting material from any source which is not your own and including it in
your work, you have to provide an appropriate footnote, endnote, parenthesis or
bibliographic reference to the source material.
2. Every material literally quoted from another source must be in inverted commas and its
source indicated as in point 1 above;
3. Material not adopted literally but merely paraphrased must also be marked as indicated
in point 1 above.
2.3 Why quote
• A bibliographic quotation is a source of information for the reader, reviewer or opponent
of a document.
• The author proves their own knowledge of the given topic.
• Identification and back search of a document, or a source of reference to other literary
works.
• Observing the author ethics (and copyright).
• The creation of the so-called hidden bibliographies (lists of bibliography = bibliographies
included directly in a particular document or informing about further literature to the
given subject or topic).
3. QUOTATION NORM
The rules of quoting in the list of bibliography and using references in the text are established by
the internationally valid “quotation norm”:
CSN ISO 690 - CSN ISO 690 Bibliographic quotations. Content, form and structure (in force since
01/12/1996)
It contains the rules of writing and referring to bibliographic quotations taken from
monographic publications and their parts, journal articles, monograph contributions (e.g.
conference anthologies) and patent documents.
CSN ISO 690-2 Bibliographic quotations. Part 2: Electronic documents or their parts (in force
since 01/02/2000)
It determines the ways of quoting electronic monographs, databases and computer programs
and their parts, electronic periodicals (journals) and their parts (articles), electronic notice
boards, discussion forums and electronic reports, both for electronic publications on various
media (CD-ROMs, discs), and online documents with which it is necessary to indicate their
availability in the computer network.
The norm determines:
• the general rules of writing bibliographic quotations (author, title, publication...),
• formal aspects and structure of quotations (in what order and form they are written),
Information Literacy MODULE 11 How to quote properly?
• obligatory and optional information,
• the layout of lists of bibliography and methods of references.
3.1 DIFFERENT QUOTATION STYLES
In addition to this international norm, other rules, instructions or recommendations (quotation
styles) are used for putting together bibliographic quotations.
Some fields, journals, publishers etc. use their own quotation rules (quotation styles). They do so
for various reasons - e.g. the tradition of a given journal, specific needs of a particular field etc.
3.1.1 EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENT QUOTATION STYLES
For illustrative purposes, we will mention some of the used quotation styles.
Psychology APA Style
Medicine NLM Style
Humanities MLA Style
Social sciences ASA Style
Technical fields IEEE Style
Natural sciences CSE Style
3.2 GENERAL QUOTATION PRINCIPLES
Let us summarize the most important aspects of quotation:
✔ transparency and uniformity of information,
✔ accuracy (there are several ways of writing quotations; you should choose one and use it
for all quotations in the given paper),
✔ completeness (more information for the purpose of back identification - inaccuracies
with adopted quotations),
✔ the use of primary sources (you should quote information only from those publications
you held in your hands),
✔ unabbreviated words included in the information on the cited publication (CSN ISO 4.
Information and documentation: rules of abbreviating words from titles and document
titles),
✔ there is a principle of keeping the orthographic standards of the given language (with
foreign-language literature),
✔ you have to observe the principle of maintaining the language of the book (we do not
translate information on the title, the author, the edition - 1st edition, 2nd ed., physical
description - 320 p. (pages), 320 S. (Seiten), the names of publishers),
✔ we skip missing information (if some information is missing, we skip it and proceed with
the following data).
3.2.1 WHERE DO WE FIND THE INFORMATION FOR QUOTING
The source of information for bibliographic quoting is the primary document, i.e. the book I am
holding, for example. What we have to know:
• information characterizing the publication (structure),
• where to find the information (sources),
• how to write it (norm),
• quotation information sources - title page (+ back page of the title page), imprint, paging
(the number of pages is found on the top or the bottom).
Information Literacy MODULE 11 How to quote properly?
3.2.2. The structure of a bibliographic quotation (monograph)
The quotation structure according to the norm ISO 690 is as follows:
Information on the author (SURNAME, First name). Information on the title (Title: subtitle). The
number of the edition. Information on the publisher (The place of publication: publishing
house), the year of publication. Length (the number of pages). ISBN (International Standard
Book Number).
There are various types of quoting.
When quoting, you have to use all the obligatory information written above in bold letters. Have
a look at the differences summarized below:
• Obligatory information x optional information (secondary liability, edition).
• Punctuation varies in individual parts of a quotation; it is specified with individual
document types.
• Information - separating character - space - further information (the space is typed only
after the separating character).
• After every separator, we start with a capital letter.
4. THE USE OF QUOTATION IN PRACTICE
Quotation is most frequently used in:
• Bibliographic lists (lists of used literature) - various document types (monograph, article,
www)
• References in scientific texts - various ways (numeric, the first element and date, notes)
4.1 BIBLIOGRAPHIC LISTS, LISTS OF USED LITERATURE
It is found at the end of a scientific text (a list of used or recommended literature, also called
hidden bibliography = “hidden” in monographs, diploma theses...).
It contains individual bibliographic entries, lists of bibliographic quotations and reference
methods.
Ordering entries in a list: alphabetical according to authors or titles, temporal according to the
year of publication, or numeric according to the order of references in the text.
Formal aspects are given by the norm CSN ISO 690 Bibliographic quotations.
Intended for authors and editors of both printed and electronic documents.
4.2 QUOTATION REFERENCES IN SCIENTIFIC TEXTS
In a scientific text, e.g. a diploma thesis, we refer to the document from which we quote parts of
the text, ideas or conclusions. In the text of our paper, we can use literal quotations (a text
taken from someone else’s work is written in our paper word by word) or free formulations of
someone else’s text - in the form of paraphrases.
References in the text serve as a way of identification of the document (or its part). A reference
is inserted in the text or stated in a footnote (at the end of a chapter or the text),
correspondence between the reference and the relevant bibliographic quotation must be
ensured.
Quotations may be found in footnotes on the pages where references are; at the end of
chapters; at the end of the document - a more common way (an advantage lies in that all the
quotations are together). A combination of both ways means including a quotation both in a
footnote and in the list at the end of the paper. The page with quotations is usually called:
Literature, A list of bibliographic quotations or Used sources (includes all document types
Information Literacy MODULE 11 How to quote properly?
including electronic documents). Quotations are ordered alphabetically (first titles starting with
numbers, then letters).
In case there are more works by one author, we order them according to the year of publication
- the most recent works come first.
The following three methods are used for the entry of references in a text:
• the method of continuous notes,
• the method of numeric quotations,
• the method of the first component and date.
5. REFERENCE MANAGERS
Reference managers are software for the management of bibliographic information. They
enable you to create, collect, upload and export bibliographic information, and then create lists
of bibliography (according to the predefined quotation styles). The use of a reference manager
may make writing a scientific text easier.
Examples of paid reference managers:
• endnote.com (free at Masaryk University)
• refworks.com
• refman.com
• procite.com
• zotero.org (free)
• connotea.org (free)
Examples of freely accessible reference managers:
They may work on your local PC (EndNote, ProCite, Reference Manager, Zotero) or online
(EndNoteWeb, RefWorks, Connotea).
Masaryk University has bought the licence for EndNoteWeb. The University Campus Library has
published an interactive tutorial on its website; you can learn how to work with this reference
manager there: http://www.ukb.muni.cz/kuk/animace/eiz/ENW/.
You can also download a 30-day free-trial version of EndNote directly to your PC and try it.
6. SUMMARY
And you have come to an end. We hope that from now on you will use the quotation norm while
writing seminar and other papers, instead of just quickly writing quotations based on your
common sense. Correct writing and use of bibliographic quotations will undoubtedly add
credibility and formal clarity to your papers.
In this module you became acquainted with the ways of quoting used literature according to the
norm ISO 690, and you learned about other quotation styles. We recommend you to ask what
form of quoting is used at your departments.
Now return to the beginning of the study text and fill in the table.
Points to remember
1. Memorize the principles of quotation ethics.
2. Use this text as a brief manual for the creation of quotations according to the norms ISO 690
and ISO 690-2.
3. When you are writing your diploma thesis, remember reference managers which may facilitate
your work.
4. There are many quotation styles. Therefore, before you start writing any paper, check what
form of quoting your department uses.