italics added

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bertietheblue

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When you write 'italics added' (or 'bold added for emphasis' or similar) after quoted text,

must it be in square brackets?

And where should it be inserted:

xxx." [italics added] OR
xxx [italics added]."

and if quote marks are before the full-stop (eg with quoted text but not whole sentences):

xxx" [italics added]. OR
xxx". [italics added]

?
 

Tdol

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As it's not part of the text directly, I would put it outside the punctuation.
 

bertietheblue

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As it's not part of the text directly, I would put it outside the punctuation.

Thanks. Maybe you are right, but I don't think for the reason you give. It is after all sometimes legitimate to insert square bracketed text in a direct quote, for example if you are:

-making an authorial comment, eg inserting a name after a pronoun to make it clear to the reader who is being referred to or "[sic]" after a misspelling to make clear that the misspelling was in the original quote and is not a typo
-altering the case of the first letter of a quote, eg if the quote is a sentence and so opens with a capital letter (eg "The ...") but you only use part of the quote and not the full sentence, you might change the first letter to lower case ( "[t]he ...").

To me "[italics added]" is an authorial comment so I can see grounds for including it within the quotes especially if the closing quote marks come after a full-stop - to me it doesn't look right for "[italics added]" to stand in isolation suspended from the rules of punctuation.

But as I said, you may be right and it should always come after the quotes. I simply don't know and cannot find a reliable source that will give me a definitive answer (if there is one - maybe it's just a question of preference/which style guide you read).
 
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