Quotations

Single quotation marks, the three-line threshold, indented blocks, and where the punctuation goes.

OSCOLA quotes in single inverted commas, with double marks only for a quotation inside a quotation (r 1.5). The Quotations tool applies all of this for you; this guide explains what it is doing.

Up to three lines: run it into the text

A quotation of three lines or less is incorporated in your sentence, introduced with at most a comma. Closing punctuation follows the closing quotation mark unless it is an essential part of the quotation — a question mark usually is.

Full stop outside

‘the three questions, duty, causation, and remoteness, run continually into one another’.

Essential question mark inside

‘What is the point of a dissent, after all, at least on the highest court of the jurisdiction, if the law simply is whatever the majority on that court says it is?’

Longer than three lines: an indented block

Longer quotations sit in an indented paragraph with a line space above and below, no further indentation of the first line, and no quotation marks at all. A quotation inside the block takes single marks. The footnote marker follows the closing punctuation.

Ellipses and alterations

Mark omitted text with a spaced ellipsis ( … ), and use one where the quotation ends mid-sentence. Never open a quotation with an ellipsis. Mark an error in the original with [sic] immediately after it. Quotation marks may be flipped between single and double to fit the nesting; nothing else in a quotation may be silently changed.

After the citation

If you added emphasis, say so; if the emphasis was already there, say that instead; and if you dropped a footnote from the quoted passage, note it (r 1.5).

12[2008] UKHL 48, [2009] 1 AC 61 [12] (emphasis added).

101Elliot, Williams and Young (n 99) 27 (footnote omitted).

Last reviewed 7 August 2026