AGLC4 Rule 1.5.1: Quotations: General Rule
Quotations of three lines or fewer run into the text in single quotation marks; longer ones are indented as a block in smaller type with no quotation marks, and legislative or treaty extracts of any length may also be set that way. A block quotation in a footnote has its citation on the line directly before or after it. Quoted words must match the source apart from permitted changes to punctuation, italicisation of titles and the case of the first letter; other changes go in square brackets and omissions are marked by ellipses.
AGLC4 page 15
Formatting
- Short quotation (up to three lines): in the text, enclosed in single curly quotation marks.
- Long quotation (four lines or more): indented from the left margin, in smaller font, with no opening or closing quotation marks.
- Nesting in a short quotation: single marks outside, double marks for a quotation within it, then single again, alternating.
- Nesting in a block quotation: single marks for the first inner quotation, double within that, alternating.
- Quotation marks in the source are changed to follow this scheme.
- Full stops, hyphens, dashes and quotation marks in the quoted words are conformed to rule 1.6.
- Titles that the Guide italicises are italicised in the quotation (rule 1.8.2).
- Any other change or insertion goes in square brackets; omitted words are shown by an ellipsis.
- In a footnote, the citation for a block quotation sits on the line immediately before or after the block.
Example
Quoted from the Guide, page 15- 105The claims are inferred from the rhetorical question: [H]ow should we respond? Do we respond [to the problems in remote communities] with more of what we have done in the past? Or do we radically change direction with an intervention strategy matched to the magnitude of the problem? Commonwealth, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 7 August 2007, 10 (Malcolm Brough, Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs).
In the text
She observed that ‘the threshold for determining that an international organisation has “effective control” over an operation ought to be high’.96
The facts were stated as follows:
In 1998 the Remuneration Tribunal, under the Remuneration Tribunal Act 1973 (Cth), determined an annual postal allowance of $9,000 for MHRs … In Brown v West the plaintiff … [the] shadow Attorney-General, brought an action to challenge the decision of the Minister for Administrative Services … to increase this entitlement … to $30,525.98 [Original: … Remuneration Tribunal Act 1973 (Cth) … Brown v. West …]
The Court observed that ‘the [Commonwealth] Act was clearly within power’.100 [Original: … the Act was clearly within power. …]
Whitlam assured European leaders that, while Australia agreed that ‘an increase in the price of crude oil was justified, … [it] did not wish to see a confrontation develop between cartels of producers and consumers’.102 [Original: … we did not wish to see …]
The Judge stated:
Thus elaborating, the first question is whether ‘a financial benefit is given’ within the meaning of s 229 of the Corporations Act (in relation to the prohibition on related party benefits without member approval). The second question is whether the exception … in s 210 … is made out …104
See also
Check your footnotes against these rules
Paste your paper into the free AGLC4 checker and each footnote is graded against the Guide, with the rule it breaks. To write a citation from scratch, use the AGLC4 citation generator.
Formats, examples, passages, tables and the forms marked Not are quoted from the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (4th ed, Melbourne University Law Review Association, 2018), with the page of the Guide they appear on. Titles, summaries and explanations are our own.