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In these days of googling, it's sloppy to not find the source of a quotation. That said, there are quotes that have unclear origins, and for those, I guess you have some wiggle room. I think the "as someone once said," formulation is less than ideal because it feels casual and suggests that you just haven't bothered to investigate the origins of the ...

Roughly speaking, it means if you have to pay alimony, you have to earn money. Writing is not a way to earn money (for most of us). He's suggesting that it's insufficient income for an alimony payment, so a writer would have to take on some other work to earn enough money to make the payment, thus cutting into writing time. Of course, you do have to suffer ...

Quotes from real people and books are generally considered fair use so they can be used without paying anyone. Song lyrics and poems are a gray area. Some people will tell you you can use portions of song lyrics - a line or two - but others will say you can't use any without permission. If you're not using the whole song, you'd probably be able to get ...

Personally, and without any reference to support it, I've always believed the quote meant that those dedicated to a writing career often cannot also effectively support a long-term, committed relationship. Which leads to divorce. And alimony. Hence the curse. And Kris' reference from TJ Smith citing Mailer's six wives seems to confirm he suffered from it.

No, it would not be appropriate. It's quite possible that nobody would check you up on this, but quote attributions are expected to be, you know, correct. Mis-attributing a quote might be an honest error, but it's more likely to be a case of insufficient research, or even intentionally lending weight to your work by leaning on an existing respected ...

As someone who is opposed to using punctuation in non-standard ways to emphasize quotes and who prefers using words to explain what's going on, I say you should skip the italics. Let the story clearly indicate that what the reader is reading is written communication. Breathing heavily she plunked leaned over her desk and grabbed a pen from the wicker ...

CMOS says periods and commas go inside. It doesn't make sense, to me, but that's the rule. Bear in mind that this does not apply to question or exclamation marks, which only go inside the quotation marks if they belong to the words being quoted. There's a fairly interesting discussion on this, here.

I agree with Kate Sherwood, you should be able to attribute most quotes these days by simple fact checking. I also like her suggestions for introducing the text, but you can also consider other, formal methods of citation and attribution. In those cases where it's ambiguous as to who said it (for example, there's disagreement or debate over the true ...

Knowing nothing about APA formatting, I would say that the material in quotes should stay quoted — use "our," since it's a direct quote which you immediately cite. I don't see a reason to change the actual quote, and your summary in the previous sentence uses "their" correctly in context. There are contexts where you'd change our to [their] with the ...

Avoiding the problem (as per Lauren Ipsum's answer) is probably the best way to deal with this. But let's assume you don't want to change anything about your paragraphs. The answer is unambiguous: no close quotation mark. For two reasons. First reason is simple correctness: you don't want Fowler to turn in his grave. The more important reason is clarity. ...

You have broken and punctuated it correctly. But if you're worried about the she continued, then change it up a little: "Well," Antimony began, taking a deep, thoughtful breath, and stepping a little closer. "If you fill the 5 pound sack, and then empty it into a 3 pound sack, you'll have 2 pounds left over. Then you can empty the 3 pound sack back ...

Song lyrics and poetry can be a problem. In fiction publishing, most houses will require you to get permission to quote even as little as a single line from a copyrighted popular song or from a well-known poem that's still in copyright, because many copyright owners are extremely litigious and the legal precedents on whether a single line is "fair use" are ...

In academic writing, following style guides is particularly important for citations and notes. Are you editing to APA style or another style guide? I'd absolutely check that first and do as the style guide instructs. Your department may also have a style guide for you to follow. (I don't have a copy of APA or I'd check.) Barring any such guidance: If ...

I think if you indicated somewhere (preface, end notes, first footnote) that the translations are all yours, you could either write the Arabic and then your translation, or write it in English (or whatever language) and footnote it and have the referent be the original Arabic with the citation information. As a reader, I would assume any translation I'm ...

The diary entry is part of a the book, is it not? If the section quoted is out of a book in a book, the same author wrote it in the same text as the rest of the book. Just cite it like you would a normal quote. You may find this helpful www.bibme.org On the off chance that I misread the question the first time, try to phrase your sentences in such a way ...

I've been thinking about it, and I think if you're only doing this a couple times, I'd recommend that you just not quote the original directly. It's a total cheat, and if you can find a better answer, I'd love to hear it, but... Instead of: German researchers found that only "3,5 percent of the world's population knew how to quote these numbers ...

try: It's been said that "Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions.". or This idea reminds me of the famous quotation, "Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions.". or With regards to this particular idea, it reminds me of a certain quotation - "Many wealthy people are little more than janitors ...