#CopyeditingProTip
Unless you're an attorney or a particularly scholarly scholar, you may, in quoting published material, capitalize a lowercase letter or lowercase a capital letter at the beginning of a quoted bit, as it serves your own text, without the use of brackets.
Unless you're an attorney or a particularly scholarly scholar, you may, in quoting published material, capitalize a lowercase letter or lowercase a capital letter at the beginning of a quoted bit, as it serves your own text, without the use of brackets.
In other words, don't do this:
Dreyer says that "[u]nless you're an attorney or a particularly scholarly scholar"...
Dreyer says that "[u]nless you're an attorney or a particularly scholarly scholar"...
Also, though all intratext deletions must be called out with ellipses, no quote needs to begin or end with them.
Sometimes, when writers are quoting material that itself includes a lot of ellipses, they will set their own ellipses denoting deletions in brackets, but otherwise I don't see a reason ever to do it.
You will note that quotes from published reviews on RH jackets and covers are liberally decorated with brackets and ellipses, and I know it drives some of my editors mad, but I think it quietly sends a message of integrity.
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