How to Use Brackets
Brackets and parentheses
Use brackets to avoid placing parentheses inside parentheses.
- Example: The members of the Koreshan Unity (established by Cyrus Teed [1839-1908] as a utopian community) believed that the Earth was surrounded by a giant, hollow sphere.
Brackets and changes made to quotes
Use brackets to indicate when you have changed the exact words in an author’s quote.
- Example: "In anticipation of an attack, he [Julius Caesar] ordered his men to guard the city gates."
Brackets and ellipses
If you are quoting material that already has an ellipsis in the text, then any ellipses you add to the quote should be placed in brackets.
- Original text: Fred sat thoughtfully for a while before saying, “I don’t know why …. But I have a feeling, a very certain and unshakable feeling, that you and I are about to become best friends.”
- Correct: Early in the novel, the protagonist says, “I don’t know why …. But I have a feeling [. . .] that you and I are about to become best friends.”
[sic]
The word sic comes from the Latin phrase sic erat scriptum, which means “thus was it written.” It is used to show that an error in a quote is not your mistake and was present in the original text.
Use [sic] to indicate when you are providing a quote that has an error in it.
- Example: An angry Twitter user told me to “keep my dogg [sic] on a shorter leash.”
