: Re: Citing speech and interviews in biographies I am currently writing a biography of a band, and have a question regarding citing quotes, such as from interviews. Is it necessary to cite everything

@Jessie137

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I don't know if the rules for citing from speech are any different from those of citing from text, however, if you are to cite something or someone verbatim, you need to put it in quotes, if not also as a separate paragraph. In cases where the article/object of the quote is tacit, you may place it in square brackets as part of the quote. This also applies to conjunctive terms. For example, take the following phrase:

"Fred was seen leaving the crime scene. After hours of searching, he was arrested by police."

If only the second sentence of this phrase is relevant to your discussion, you may quote it as follows:

"After hours of searching, he [Fred] was arrested by police."

Note that you may also omit part of the quote that is not relevant to your discussion, so long as you don't take it out of its context, and so long as you replace it with ellipses. For example,

"Fred was seen leaving the crime scene...[but] was later arrested by police."

Notice how I also added a conjunctive term in square brackets in order to join the two sentences from the original quote.

Note that these rules apply only if you are citing from the original source. If, however, you are citing from a secondary source, you must paraphrase it as well as acknowledge the source where it came from. Using the above example, you may write:

"According to the Daily Telegraph, Fred was seen leaving the crime, but was later arrested by police."

And, if publishing this in a (scientific) paper, for example, you will most likely need to reference the bibliography entry of your source.

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