Whether you capitalize the first letter of a quotation depends on how the quotation fits into your sentence. Capitalize the first letter of a quotation, regardless of the case used in the source, if it forms a clause or a self-contained unit of thought that is merely framed or presented by your sentence. Begin a quotation with a lowercase letter, regardless of the case used in the source, if you integrate the quoted material syntactically into your own sentence. Use brackets to indicate that you have changed the case of a letter.
A quotation that is merely framed or presented by your prose will often be introduced by a verb of saying or thinking—such as writes, argues, or recalls—or by an adverbial phrase of attribution. In such cases the quotation is always preceded by a comma.
Ona warns her mother, “[T]his will be an arduous trip, perilous” (Toews 197).
For Gessen, “If anyone holds the tools of defining the elephant,” it is these students of suppressed disciplines (4).
As Arendt reminds us, “The purpose of a trial is to render justice, and nothing else” (253).
A quoted principle or saying presented as such is likewise set apart from your own thought.
The phrase “It’s all Greek to me” is said to have originated in medieval Latin.
A quotation that is syntactically integrated into your sentence—and therefore begins with a lowercase letter—is easy to spot when the integration occurs midclause:
While Rose was a precocious talker, Marigold “thought she might just skip talking altogether, and wait for writing” (Glück 26).
Myriam imagines herself an office with “shiny imported wooden floors below her feet, gardenias framing the floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the expanding Andes” (Delgado Lopera 125).
Quotations preceded by the relative pronoun that, by a conjunction, or by an adverbial clause that does not serve to attribute the quotation to its source or speaker also fall under this category, even if they are complete clauses.
Goffman notes that “[a] conflict between candor and seemliness will often be resolved in favor of the latter” (75).
Rose does not share Marigold’s literary bent, but “she was not entirely lacking in metaphoric insight” (Glück 42).
The first word of a quotation following a colon retains the case used in the source.
Exile, Said suggests, can be liberating: “to be as marginal and undomesticated as someone who is in real exile is for an intellectual to be unusually responsive . . . to innovation and experiment rather than the authoritatively given status quo” (63–64).
Exile, Said suggests, can be liberating: “A condition of marginality . . . frees you from having to always proceed with caution, afraid to overturn the applecart” (63).
For guidance on punctuation with quotations, see section 6.48 of the MLA Handbook.
For more on alterations of quotations with brackets, see this post.
Works Cited
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin, 2006.
Delgado Lopera, Julián. Fiebre Tropical. Feminist Press, 2020.
Gessen, Masha. The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. Riverhead Books, 2017.
Glück, Louise. Marigold and Rose. Picador, 2022.
Goffman, Erving. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Simon and Schuster, 1963.
Said, Edward. Representations of the Intellectual. Vintage, 1996.
Toews, Miriam. Women Talking. Bloomsbury, 2020.