H. Brackets

Using Brackets for Clarity

You may not use brackets often, but they can become helpful punctuation in academic writing as you integrate quotes into your essays. You should use brackets when you have to alter text within a quote to make something clear for your readers.

Adding information

The brackets let your readers know you have made changes to the quote in some way. The material inside the brackets is your addition.

For example, if you need to add information to a quote for clarity, you would use brackets.

Example 1

She said, “They [the vampire hunters] were after me, but it was all a big mistake.”

Here, your readers would know the vampire hunters were not a part of that particular quote and you added the words for clarity.

Try to avoid these kinds of edits to source material; whenever possible, revise your own writing to leave the direct quote unchanged.

Acknowledging source errors

You may also use brackets in a direct quote when the quoted material contains a writing error, such as a misspelled word or grammar mistake, so the reader knows that the mistake is not yours and that you’re aware of the error, both of which affect your credibility. Some disciplines put [sic] in parentheses instead of brackets.

Example 2

The reporter noted that “the fair went on as planned even though the sky treatened [sic] the crowd with rain.”

If a source constains many errors, you may want to consider finding a different source.

LICENSE AND ATTRIBUTION

“Brackets” by Leandra Binder was adapted from “1.2: Brackets” of Grammar Essentials (Excelsior Online Writing Lab), used according to creative commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

 

License

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H. Brackets Copyright © by University of New Mexico is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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