Quotation is the human-made practice of reproducing another speaker's exact words within a new communicative act, framed by quotation marks, block formatting, or other delimiters, and accompanied by attribution to the original source. It carves quoted material from paraphrase or summary by the strict requirement of verbatim fidelity. Quotation persists through textual transmission (copying text across documents), legal testimony (recording witness statements), academic citation (marking borrowed language), and literary convention (dialogue representation, intertextual reference). Its boundaries are set by the delimiter system in use and the attribution convention; a passage without delimiters or attribution is not quotation but paraphrase or plagiarism. [formal: citatio | substrate: behavior | horizon: a life | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
quotation
Quotation is the human-made practice of reproducing another speaker's exact words within a new communicative act, framed by quotation marks, block formatting, or other delimiters, and accompanied by attribution to the original source. It c…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made communicative practice of reproducing another's exact words — with attribution and framing markers — built to persist through textual transmission, legal testimony, literary convention, and everyday discourse
Names and aliases
- quotationen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrntsu1i036zd1nlwef863p4SERVES →
Quotation exists to serve attribution: its designed purpose is to credit the original source of words or ideas. The servant (quotation) points at the master (attribution). Law 8d.
- cmrc6dopv00jba9g4op1ivbb1SERVES →
Quotation is maintained for the sake of communication — its designed purpose is to reproduce another's words accurately so that the original utterance can be carried across contexts. For-whose-sake: quotation→communication per Law 8d.
Relations to this entry
- cmrodqb7z04i7d1nlys74y5ck← INSTANCE_OF
An epigraph IS a specific kind of quotation — it is a brief quotation deliberately placed at the beginning of a work to set interpretive frame. A competent speaker would call an epigraph 'a kind of quotation' qualified by its placement and purpose. Per Law 9: specific→general.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 22, 2026, 4:37 AM UTC
- Content hash
- eed13664158976438acefda00abaa159004f22e68723e0861f3f7272588f7d06