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Wiktionary:Quotations

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Quotations, also called citations, are records of a term's use that serve two purposes: they provide evidence that a term or sense exists (as required by our attestation criteria), and they provide examples of how it is used as part of a language (what register it has, etc.).

Quotations may be placed in entries or in the Citations: namespace. In general, a few good and illustrative quotations should go directly in the entry, while other quotations (if there are very many) can go in the Citations: namespace to avoid cluttering the entry. For example, a few quotations of parrot are available in that entry, and more are available at Citations:parrot.

Choosing quotations

Ideally, quotations should:

  1. Illustrate a term's meaning by surrounding context, but without being too long — quotations where that term is the "star" of the sentence serve the reader better than lengthy passages which have the term incidentally buried in them;
  2. Extend the time range that we have quotations for, or fill long time gaps;
  3. Show the variety of contexts that a term is used in; and
  4. Show the variety of genres, regions, and registers that a term is used in.

In practice, it's usually a lot of effort to meet all these goals at once.

All quotations should be from works written in the language of the term in question, followed by an English translation when appropriate. If a term is known to have been coined in a specific work in another language, that information should go in the etymology section.

In general, editors should add quotations that count toward the attestation requirement for inclusion, such as ones from dateable printed sources. Printed works which have been digitized and hosted on sites like Google Books, indexes of periodicals, and Wikisource are particularly valuable. Usenet is also a valuable source of quotations. In general, the earliest quotation that can be reliably dated should be included whether or not it counts toward attestation requirements.

For more information on good sources for quotations, see Wiktionary:Quotations/Resources.

Formatting individual quotations

A user suggests that this English project page be cleaned up, giving the reason: “Add examples using the quote-* templates”.
Please see the discussion on Requests for cleanup(+) or the talk page for more information and remove this template after the problem has been dealt with.

Using quotation templates

Wiktionary has a number of general purpose quotation templates which can be used to create citations from various forms of media, such as books, videos, and journals. How to use {{quote-book}}, one of the most common of these templates, is explained below. In general, a guide to how to use a quotation template, or any other template, can be found in the documentation that appears on the template's page. 

#* {{quote-book|1=|date=|author=|publisher=|title=|chapter=|url=|page=|text=|t=}}

For example, at English boy: 

#* {{quote-book|en|year=1876|author=Frances Eliza Millett Notley|title=The Kiddle-a-Wink|chapter=A Tale of Love|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qhcCAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover|page=169
|passage=He is not quite a baby, Alfred," said Ellen, "though he is only a big stupid '''boy'''. We have made him miserable enough. Let us leave him alone.}}

See below for an index of quotations templates.

Manually formatting quotations

Though templatized quotations are strongly preferred, quotations can be manually formatted using code like that below: 

# First definition.
#*
'''Year''', Author, ''Source title'', Publisher, pages #–#:
#*: First quotation of '''word'''.
#*:: Translation [if applicable]
#* '''Year''', Author (indicate as translator or editor if not original author), ''Source title'', Publisher (and date of later edition), page #:
#*: '''Words''' of second quotation.
# Second definition.
#: etc.

Important notes include:

  1. When quoting a short poem, article or other short work, double quotation marks are used to enclose titles ("Title") instead of italicization by two apostrophes (''Title'').
  2. Typefaces should be as indicated. The year is always in bold, the title of the work in italics or, for shorter works, quotation marks.
  3. The illustration shows the marks that will ensure proper indentation.
  4. No blank lines are included within these entries. Blank lines in a numbered list will restart the numbering.
  5. In the quotation itself, the word being illustrated should be in bold.
  6. If applicable, provide a link to Wikipedia (format: [[w:Elizabeth Smart (Canadian author)|Elizabeth Smart]] or {{w|Elizabeth Smart (Canadian author)|Elizabeth Smart}}) for the author and a link to Wikisource (format: [[s:title|title]]) for the work. Make sure the links point to the relevant pages on the other projects.
  7. The year should be that of the earliest edition known to use the word. Where feasible, the page number should be taken from the first edition, but if a later edition is used (e.g. paperback version, or digitised by Google Books), then the publication date should be added in parentheses after the publisher's name. In these cases, publication details should reflect the work actually cited: do not give the name, location etc. of the publisher of the first edition if you are not citing it directly.
  8. Printing location, publisher, and publication year should be given, but not other details like street addresses or connecting prose such as "printed for".
  9. The date of the cited edition should be specified (if different from the date of writing/first publication), but not further descriptive details such as that it is a "newly enlarged and corrected edition" etc.
  10. If the quotation can be read online, the page number can be linked to the online source. Links within the entry can always be provided with ISBN numbers.
  11. Generally, the quoted text itself should not contain links but they may be useful when quotes contain uncommon words or when the quoted text was originally linked. A 2010 discussion Links in the body of quoted text on the subject did not reach any conclusion about this.

Quotation gadgets

A gadget called Quiet Quentin allows users to search Google Books for quotations, allows users to select quotations of interest, and then automatically formats the information about the quotations using Wiktionary's templates.

Another pair of gadgets allow users to generate properly formatted quotations straight from the search pages of Google Books and Google Scholar. You can learn more about how these gadgets work and how to manually install them at this 2022 Grease Pit discussion.

Placing quotations

Quotations should always be ordered from earliest to the most recent.

Between definitions

See also: Wiktionary:Entry layout § Example sentences and Example sentences

The following is what the basic layout for quotations between definitions renders as:

  1. First definition.
    • Year, Author, Source title, Publisher, pages #–#:
      First quotation of word.
      Translation [if applicable]
    • Year, Author (indicate as translator or editor if not original author), Source title, Publisher (and date of later edition), page #:
      Words of second quotation.
  2. Second definition.
    etc.

An example, taken from gully:

  1. (Scotland, northern UK) A large knife.

Quotations from Usenet should be formatted as in the entry rainburn:

  1. (humorous) A notional burn on the skin caused by excess exposure to heavy rain.
    • 1991 June 13, "Mark Grundy" (username), "Plot Seeds/Story: Undead of Purditory", in rec.games.frp, Usenet:
      It started with neck and upper body sores that looked a bit like rainburn - but usually they had only two or three of them.

Linking to citations pages

Main entries can use {{seeCites}} or {{seemoreCites}} under a given sense, or under a level four "Quotations" header, to link to citations pages.

Citations pages

Longer lists of quotations, quotations that use terms in ambiguous ways such that it is not practical to sort them under a single definition-line, and quotations that are needed for attestation but are not be illustrative of ordinary usage of the word, may be more appropriately placed on a Citations: page.

Each citations page should begin with the {{citation}} template, which will create a clear link back to the main entry. The first parameter of this template is the language code, for example, {{citation|en}} for English. If a citations page is to contain citations from multiple languages, each language section should begin with its own {{citation}} template.

When citations are grouped by part of speech and definition on a citations page, each definition should begin with a gloss formatted as a level three header. Such a gloss should be short while providing enough information to indicate to readers which sense a citation is for. The gloss heading can also optionally be followed by a usage {{timeline}}, followed by the citations. An example of this can be found at Citations:parrot.

Quotations on citations pages are formatted similarly to quotations in entries, but generally without #.

Naming citations pages

Inflected forms and alternative spellings can be cited as such, especially if their existence is in doubt, but it may be useful to gather their citations on the page for the lemma, also known as the "dictionary form". To this end, {{citations}} template can take multiple parameters to list all of the words which are being cited on a given citations page (see e.g. Citations:moose-misse), and other citation pages (e.g. Citations:moose-miss) can contain hard or soft redirects to that primary page.

Index to quotation templates

The following is a table of generic quotation templates:

v • d • e
Quotation and citation templates
Quotation templates for dictionary entries
{{quote-av}} · {{quote-book}} · {{quote-hansard}} · {{quote-journal}} · {{quote-mailing list}} · {{quote-newsgroup}} · {{quote-song}} · {{quote-us-patent}} · {{quote-video game}} · {{quote-web}} · {{quote-wikipedia}}
Citation templates for reference sections and talk pages
{{cite-av}} · {{cite-book}} · {{cite-journal}} · {{cite-newsgroup}} · {{cite-song}} · {{cite-thesis}} · {{cite-video game}} · {{cite-web}}

Various templates are used to facilitate adding quotations from oft-cited authors. See /Templates for a list of these. If you cannot find what you need there, you may be able to find it in Category:English quotation templates.

The quote templates are used to add quotations (examples of uses) to entries or on citation pages, while cite templates are used to cite references, such as for etymologies, and for "Further reading" sections.

There are also author-specific quotation templates, which begin with the prefix RQ:. This allows editors to avoid typing the same information hundreds of times and has the bonus that we can easily find, for example, all quotations from Romeo and Juliet. An incomplete list with details can be found at Wiktionary:Quotations/Templates. A complete list can be found here.

Reporting and formatting information about quotations

Dates

The date corresponds with original authorship, the time that the citation was put into the exact words quoted. Usually this will be given as the first year of publication. For a work published posthumously, the date is ante the year of the author's death. Preferably the work is a first edition, but otherwise the date of the edition should be placed in the edition section. In contrast, for quotations of translated works, where the translator is noted before the author, the year of translation is stated first. This is true even for borrowed or transliterated terms.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be avoided unless their usage is almost universal. Common abbreviations in quotations include c. ({{c.}}) for approximate dates, a. ({{a.}}) for known latest possible dates, p. ({{p.}}) for known earliest possible dates, et al. to avoid lists of coauthors, and abbreviations for locations such as unitalicized p. for page or l. for line number.

Debated authorship

If there is mainstream debate about who wrote a work, indicate this by listing all possible authors, or by listing the most likely author(s) and placing (uncertain) after their name(s). (As an example, there is mainstream debate about who wrote the Funeral Elegy; the debate over who wrote Romeo and Juliet is not mainstream and Shakespeare's works can be attributed to him without qualification.)

Spelling and typography

Generally, the original spelling of the word or phrase should be kept in the citation. In practice, however, this doesn't always happen.

Spelling

Reproducing the spelling is important as some variations in spelling can drastically affect the meaning; for example, breath and breathe are different words. Because Wiktionary has separate entries for different spellings of the same word (such as hajduk and hayduck), it is vital that the spelling of the word being defined is reproduced.

Diacritics

The presence or absence of diacritics, and which diacritic(s) are used is important to copy accurately. The presence or absence of a diacritic ranges from a matter of stylistic choice which doesn't affect the meaning at all, through shades of meaning, to being completely different words. For example:

  • English cliché and cliche, are identical in meaning and connotations.
  • In British English a café is usually a higher-class establishment than a cafe.
  • In English the noun exposé is a different word from the verb expose.

Where a diacritic cannot be represented by Unicode characters, the nearest representation that can be shown should be used. If there is a standard convention for the language and/or character in question then this should be followed.

Ligatures and archaic letters

When rendering modern English texts with ligatures and archaic letters, as a rule of thumb reproduce the following if they appear in the source text:

For other characters, reproduce them only if you think they affect the meaning. Otherwise, substitute appropriate modern characters.

For other languages, the importance of reproducing ligatures and other characters not used in modern English or the modern character set of that language varies. If you are uncertain, ask others their opinion in the Tea Room or on the talk page of the "About" page for that language (e.g. Wiktionary talk:About Greek).

You may find a citation at, for instance, think that was spelt thinke in the original work. There is currently no widespread consensus about what is preferred on Wiktionary, but according to a vote in September 2020, words spelled with a wynn (ƿ or Ƿ) in Old English are excluded as entries, even if they were originally spelled that way (quotations may still include the wynn). A similar case is with the long s (ſ), although no formal vote has been carried out as of January 2023.

Punctuation and spacing

Generally it is important to reproduce the punctuation of the source accurately, as this can greatly impact the meaning. (Compare "Eats shoots and leaves" with "Eats, shoots, and leaves".)

The number and width of spaces between words or sentences does not normally alter the meaning at all, and so we typically use only a single ASCII space when reproducing spaces on Wiktionary.

Some older works include a (narrow) space before punctuation marks such as colons and semicolons or between dots of an ellipsis. There is no policy on whether to include these or not, and so it is the individual editor's choice. If a space is included, it should be a standard width non-breaking space  , as in the example below: 

For some reason, old books sometimes have a space before a semicolon ; like this

Line breaks

The importance of line breaks to the meaning of the text is dependent on the type of work. Where it is important to reproduce them, an HTML line break can be used by writing <br>, or the "" or "/" characters can be used.

  • 1697, Virgil, “The First Book of the Æneis”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:
    The tracks averse a lying notice gave,
    And led the searcher backward from the cave.
  • 1671, John Milton, Paradise Regained:
    […] / Should kings and nations from thy mouth consult, / Thy counsel would be as the oracle / Urim and Thummim, those oraculous gems / On Aaron's breast, or tongue of Seers old / —
  • 1995, Joe Simpson, This Game of Ghosts, The Mountaineers Books, →ISBN:
    As Mark came out of the bathroom, I remembered my underpants. ¶ 'Hey Mark, have you got my shreddies?'

Prose

The line breaks in the body text of a work of prose are almost always inconsequential to the meaning of the words. This is because they would occur in different places if the work were printed on different sized paper, in a different text size or in a different typeface. For this reason it is not usually important to render line breaks.

Where explicit line breaks are used in prose, for example to distinguish different speakers in a conversation, they should be reproduced.

Poetry

In a poem, the line breaks are often an important part of the work. For example the verse structure, rhyming, and/or syllable patterns are often dependent on the line breaks. Normally therefore it is appropriate to reproduce all the line breaks in a poetic work. However where a long work has very long verses (for example epic poems) it will often be important just to denote the breaks of verses (although it would be unusual to require more than part of one verse of such a work for citation purposes). Which of these applies to the work is a judgement call for individual editors.

Headlines and titles

In all works, the headlines and sub-headlines of works are often chosen with a view to them fitting in the space available, and choosing where to break a line can have an impact on the importance placed upon certain words. It is a judgement call for the individual editor whether this was the case for the (sub-)headline in question, but where it was then it should be reproduced.

Hyphenation

Where a work uses hyphenation for words split across lines, these should normally only be reproduced where the line breaks are explicit (for example some words are purposefully split for rhymes or poetic meter).

The only exception to this is where the word being defined is hyphenated in this manner. In this case it should not be reproduced, but it should be noted in a HTML comment that the word was split across lines in the original. Where the word has alternate hyphenated and non-hyphenated spellings, where possible it is almost always best to cite from works where the word is not hyphenated for a line-break.

Stylized text

If a word or phrase appears boldfaced in the original text, then do not replicate the styling since boldface is used to highlight only the headword. Leave an HTML comment indicating the original styling, even if only the headword is boldfaced in the original. See also {{quoted term}}, which can be used instead to highlight a boldfaced term in the original.

If emphasis is needed, also note any substituted styling, for instance: 

A ''defined term''<!--bold instead of italics--> is defined as such.

If a word or phrase appears italicized in the original text, then replicate that styling. If the entire quotation must be italicized, leave a comment indicated that this is the correct intent. Other stylized text may be replicated or noted as best as possible.

Typography

Generally you should reproduce most typography as it is in the source, although this is less important than for the spelling and punctuation.

As a rule of thumb, the style of quotation marks and apostrophes (straight " or curly “) used in the original should always be used on Wiktionary, as should hyphens and dashes (-- vs —), and any other typography that has an impact on the meaning of the words.

Where it is not possible or not easy to reproduce the typography using standard Unicode characters or simple HTML formatting, do not attempt to do so using other methods. If it is important to the meaning, then you should note in a comment how it is formatted in the original.

Adding translations to quotations

You can help Wiktionary by adding English translations to quotations in languages other than English.

To do so, edit the page, and identify where the quotation is located in the page's wikitext source. It may be set out like this: 

#* '''1845-58''', Alexander von Humboldt, ''Kosmos''. Dritter Band - Kapitel 12
#*: Die größte '''Anhäufung''' von Nebelflecken des ganzen Firmaments findet sich in der nördlichen Hemisphäre.

In this situation, add a line below the foreign-language text beginning with #*:: as in the following example: 

#* '''1845-58''', Alexander von Humboldt, ''Kosmos''. Dritter Band - Kapitel 12
#*: Die größte '''Anhäufung''' von Nebelflecken des ganzen Firmaments findet sich in der nördlichen Hemisphäre.
#*:: The largest '''accumulation''' of nebulae in the entire sky is found in the northern hemisphere.

Alternatively, the quotation may employ a quote template, like {{quote-book}}, {{quote-journal}} or an {{RQ:...}} template: 

#* {{quote-journal|fr|date=September 10, 2015|author=|title=Dans les Yvelines, la lutte de travailleurs sans papiers pour leur régularisation|work=Le Monde
|passage=Sans papiers, M. Sylla est sans droit, sans protection sociale, ni cotisations retraite, '''licenciable''' sans aucune formalité.}}

Here, add a parameter |translation= before the closing }}: 

#* {{quote-journal|fr|date=September 10, 2015|author=|title=Dans les Yvelines, la lutte de travailleurs sans papiers pour leur régularisation|work=Le Monde
|passage=Sans papiers, M. Sylla est sans droit, sans protection sociale, ni cotisations retraite, '''licenciable''' sans aucune formalité.
|translation=Without documents, Mr Sylla has no rights, social security, or pension contributions, and '''can be sacked''' without any formalities.}}

Citation sentences should not be added to Wiktionary in a way that violates the copyright of the work from which they were taken. Generally, citation sentences taken from works under copyright protection will represent a very small portion of the work from which they are taken. It is likely that any individual citation sentence will either be a de minimis portion of the work (so small that copyright does not even apply to it), or will constitute a clear fair use of that portion of the work. It is still possible for citation sentences to infringe the copyright in a work if the citation sentence is very long and the work is very short (for example, an essay of a few pages), or if multiple citation sentences are taken from the same work.

Works that are already in the public domain are not subject to copyright protection, and can be used as sources for an unlimited number of citation sentences. Such works include:

  1. All works published in the United States before 1929.
  2. All documents produced by the U.S. government, including reports produced by federal agencies and opinions rendered by federal courts. (Works by state and local governments are usually not in the public domain.)
  3. All works created by a UK public body with Crown Status and commercially published before 1974.
  4. Any work that any private author has deliberately released into the public domain.

If there is any question as to whether the use of a citation sentence from a work under copyright will constitute a fair use of that work, then it is advisable to look for a citation sentence from a public domain source as an alternative.

See also

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