Poetry:
Unless unusual emphasis is required, verse quotations of a single line or part of a line should be incorporated, within quotation marks, as part of your text. Quotations of two or three lines may also be placed in your text, within quotation marks, but with the lines separated by a slash (/). Leave a space on each side of the slash.

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the hero says of himself, "Hamlet, thou art slain" (5.2.314).

In Hamlet, Hamlet begins his famous speech: "To be, or not to be: that is the question" (3.1.56).

Verse quotations of more than three lines should be separated from the text by double spacing, introduced in most cases by a colon, indented ten spaces from the left margin, and typed single-spaced, but without quotation marks unless they appear in the original. The spatial arrangement of the original should be reproduced as closely as possible.

Crashaw begins his poem "The Weeper" with several metaphors describing the eyes of St. Mary Magdalene, withholding until the end of the first stanza the subject of his work:

     Haile Sister Springs,
   Parents of Silver-footed rills!
      Ever bubbling things!
   Thawing crystall! Snowy hills!
Still spending, never spent, I meane
Thy faire eyes, sweet Magdalene. (ll. 15-30)

If the quotation begins in the middle of the line of verse, it should be reproduced as such and not shifted to the left margin.

It is in Act 2 of As You Like It that Jaques is given the speech that many think contains a glimpse of Shakespeare's conception of drama:

          All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. (2.7.141-45)

Prose:
Prose quotations of not more than four lines in the typescript, unless special emphasis is required, should always be incorporated, within quotation marks, as part of the text.

For Dickens it was both "the best of times" and "the worst of times" (p. 82).

"He was obeyed," writes Conrad of the company manager in Heart of Darkness," yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect" (pp. 10-11).

Longer quotations (more than four lines) are usually introduced by a colon, set off from the text by double spacing, indented ten spaces from the left margin, and typed with single-spacing. Again, no quotation marks unless they are part of the original. Let your reader know how the original was paragraphed, just as you let him know how the lines of verse were arranged on the page. Thus, if the first sentence of the quotation is the beginning of a paragraph indent a few spaces. If not, don't.

Ellipsis:
When omitting a word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph from a quoted passage, you should be guided by two principles: (1) fairness to the author being quoted and (2) clarity and correct grammar in your own prose. If only a fragment of a sentence is quoted, it will be obvious that some of the original has been omitted. (E.g., In his Inaugural Address, Kennedy spoke of a "new frontier.") But if, after material from the original has been omitted, the quotation appears to be a grammatical sentence or a series of grammatical sentences, the omission should be indicated by using ellipsis points (spaced periods: . . .).

For ellipsis within a sentence, use three spaced periods, that is, leave a space before and after each. A quotation that can stand as a complete sentence should end with a period even if something in the original has been omitted. When the ellipsis coincides with the end of your sentence, use three spaced periods following the sentence period (i.e. four periods with no space before the first). If parenthetical material follows the ellipsis at the end of your sentence, use three spaced periods, then the quotation mark, then the sentence period.

Original: The sense of isolation present in many of the poems of his earlier collections grew into an obsessive loneliness, under the pressure of two alien cultures. (From Robert Pring-Mill, Pablo Neruda: A Basic Anthology [Oxford: Dolphin, 19751, p. xxi).

Quoted with ellipsis in the middle:
As Robert Pring-Mill notes of Neruda's years in the East, "The sense of isolation . . . grew into an obsessive loneliness, under the pressure of two alien cultures."

Quoted with ellipsis at the end:
As Robert Pring-Mill notes of Neruda's years in the East, "The sense of isolation present in many of the poems of his earlier collections grew into an obsessive loneliness. . . ."

Or:
As Robert Pring-Mill notes of Neruda's years in the East, "The sense of isolation present in many of the poems of his earlier collections grew into an obsessive loneliness . . ." (p. xxi).