Brackets in quotations: [T]he, changed words, and (alteration in original)
When you change a quotation to fit your sentence, the change goes in square brackets. But what counts as a change: a capital letter, a dropped “s,” a name swapped for a description? And what do you do when the passage you are quoting already has brackets in it?
Reply below if your court or journal handles brackets differently, for example by accepting (cleaned up).
The team’s answer
Short answer. Square brackets mark every change you make inside the quotation marks: a letter switched between capital and lowercase, a word you add or replace, letters you remove from a word. If the brackets were already in your source, keep them as they are and add (alteration in original) after the citation, so the reader can tell the source’s changes from yours.
The rules
[Convention] The first letter follows your sentence. A passage quoted as its own sentence starts with a capital; one worked in after “that,” or into your own grammar, starts lowercase. If either means changing the source’s letter, bracket it: [T]he, [u]nder.
[Convention] A word you add or substitute goes in brackets, such as [the defendant’s] in place of a party’s name.
[Convention] Letters you remove from a word leave empty brackets where they were: abridge[ ].
[Convention] To show that an error was in the original, [sic] follows the error, once.
[House style] Brackets that were already in the source stay, with (alteration in original) after the citation, or (alterations in original) for more than one. If only some of them came from the source, say which.
How the Supreme Court did it
One page of Allen v. Milligan, 599 U.S. 1, 25 (2023), shows three kinds. Quoting an earlier opinion after “that,” the Court wrote “[i]t is patently clear,” lowercasing the first letter. In “minimize[s] or cancel[s] out the[ir] voting strength,” the brackets add letters and turn one word into another. And where the statute says “abridgement,” the Court wrote “abridge[ ],” with empty brackets where the letters were cut.
In your own brief
Changing a capital:
The Court explained that “[a] district is not equally open, in other words, when minority voters face—unlike their majority peers—bloc voting along racial lines, arising against the backdrop of substantial racial discrimination within the State, that renders a minority vote unequal to a vote by a nonminority voter.” Allen v. Milligan, 599 U.S. 1, 25 (2023).
The opinion reads “A district.”
Swapping a name, and keeping a bracket that was already there:
“[The State] asserts that a State’s map does not ‘abridge[ ]’ a person’s right to vote ‘on account of race’ if the map resembles a sufficient number of race-neutral alternatives.” Allen, 599 U.S. at 25 (second alteration in original) (quoting 52 U.S.C. § 10301(a)).
The opinion reads “Alabama asserts”; the empty brackets are the Court’s, so the note says the second one is in the original.
Common mistakes
A changed capital with no brackets.
Brackets that change what the source meant, not just how it fits your sentence.
Leaving out (alteration in original), so the source’s brackets pass as yours.
Re-quoting a bracketed passage from a later opinion without checking which brackets that court added.
Read more
The Quotations chapter (its opening is free to read): https://citationcode.com/book/quotations (opens in a new tab)
Paste a case citation and your quotation with its brackets; for the reports it covers, the pinpoint finder shows what each bracket replaces: https://citationcode.com/tools/pinpoint (opens in a new tab)
The opinion: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/599us1r33_dc8f.pdf (opens in a new tab)
The statute: https://www.govinfo.gov/link/uscode/52/10301?year=2024&link-type=html (opens in a new tab)