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Taking notes that distinguish quoted text easily
I started a practice in graduate school that I continue to use in genealogy. When I am capturing notes in Zotero, and am going to quote more than a few words, I mark the beginning and ending of the text with "===quote===" and "===end===." I started doing this when I got tired of dealing with the repercussions of enclosing the quoted text in quotation marks. When you use quotation marks, you hit on the problem of encountering quotation marks within the text you are quoting. Then you have to use single quotes, but what do you do if the quoted text also has single quotes within its double quotes? It becomes a mess. When you actually want to use the material in a publication, you find yourself confused as to what is being quoted by you and what was being quoted by your source. So marking the text like you see below eliminates having to do that. Here is an example of notes from a newspaper article, beginning with a summary, which contains a few words being quoted, then a whole passage...
Article refers to the efforts to secure a marriage between "the President" and one of the daughters of Queen Christina of Spain. It says:
===quote===
However this may be, the negotiation has now been broken off. The Chronicle reports, "The money is repaid, and the 'Elect of the 20th December' now looks for a consort among the legitimate issue of the crowned heads of Europe."
===end===
