Here’s a brief lesson on punctuation. It was part of an essay I’m writing but needed to cut it to reduce the article’s length. I think it’s important so I’m going to let it stand on its own.
Here goes:
Quotation marks have a specific use. That is, to let the reader know that you are accurately representing what someone said. If you surround text in quotes, that means that what you’re writing is EXACTLY what the person you’re quoting said. If you paraphrase someone, or give the gist of what they said, you can’t use quotation marks.
If you omit part of what someone said, you should replace the missing words with an ellipsis (three dots) to indicate to the reader that you left something out.
Anyone, specifically a professional journalist, who incorrectly uses quotes and omits ellipses is lying to you.
