There may be times when you need to add or alter words in a quotation, so that it will make sense in the context of your essay. For example, here we rave added a character’s name to help the quotation make sense: Malcolm muggeridge said that ‘[Macmillan] exuded a flavor of mothballs’. Square brackets are used around the interpolated matter. You might also need to alter a quotation if you are using a quotation with a lower-case letter at the [outset, but want to use it to start a sentence:
(T]he lady’s not for turning’ is just one... Read more...
[/caption]We use the apostrophe mark to indicate the omission in a standard contraction. We’d better explain the rule about this in some detail as this is where a good deal of the chaos over punctuation starts. If we had to identify one area that creates problems for students, it would be this idea of contractions – that is, where a word is shortened and an apostrophe is used to indicate this.