How to Use Quotes in Your Planner
Designing planners for a wide variety of clients, many of whom want to include uplifting quotes in their product, means that over the years we’ve had to figure out how to make sure those quotes are correct, and attributed to the right author, before sending a planner to print.
For some planners, that means checking hundreds of quotes!
How do we do it? Can you always find out who said what? Let’s dive in!
Dive Deeper Than the Basic Google Search
I know your first thought will be to both search for quotes, and to vet them, in Google and that’s a great place to start.
Just know going in that most of the generic quote sites that pop up will often be wrong.
In order to find out if all those sites, wall hangings, throw pillows, and wine bottles adorned with the quote you’re looking for are correct, you’ll need to dig a bit deeper.
“Well-behaved women rarely make history” is a quote you see often, and it has been attributed to many different women including Eleanor Roosevelt. With careful research, it’s often possible to find the true author, and give credit where credit is due.
According to Quote Investigator, the correct quote is:
“Well-behaved women seldom make history.” — Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Another popular quote is supposedly from Albert Einstein, though his work has been thoroughly searched and this quote is nowhere to be found. Below are two common variations, which really should be attributed as “Unknown” or “Anonymous.”
If your quote is from a contemporary author, look for their official website in the Google search. You may have to scroll for a while to get past all the generic quote sites.
Once on the site, use the search icon if available, or the Find function for your device, to see if the quote or keywords come up.
If you can’t find it there, or they don’t have a website, try the author’s official Facebook page or Twitter feed. We’ve been able to correctly attribute so many quotes this way!
An even better Google feature is Books. Enter your quote or author, and a list of possible books will be generated. If you don’t know which book a quote is taken from, you may have to scan multiple books, inputting the quote each time. You may be able to see the quote in a scanned page from the book, making attribution easy!
Our Favorite Resources for Verifying the Author of a Quote
There are a few websites that are designed specifically to help you find the right author for a quote. We turn to these for every planner that has quotes.
Wikiquote entries have to have proof for their entries, so check either your quote or the author there. We often have more luck with the author, because you can scroll down through their best-known quotes, and also see a section of misattributed quotes. If yours is there, you’ll know it’s wrong. Finding out that a certain person did not write a particular quote is actually helpful to you!
Quote Investigator is a fantastic resource, especially for quotes that have been attributed to various authors! You can look up a well-known quote, and see who supposedly wrote it. The QI team then investigates the claims and breaks them down for you.
Britannica is yet another great resource. Having the Encyclopedia Britannica at your fingertips is priceless!
For more historical quotes, the book Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations has a digital counterpart. Another resource for older quotes is Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.
How to Quote a Fictional Character
Quoting a fictional character from literature, television, or a movie can be a bit tricky. After all, an author or screenwriter wrote the words, but it’s the character who is speaking them.
How do you properly attribute the quote?
For many of us, fictional characters are so beloved, we feel certain that everyone knows who Yoda is and what movie franchise he’s from. We assume that the whole world has read the Harry Potter series, or can immediately identify Gandalf, Bilbo, or Frodo.
But should George Lucas, J. K. Rowling, and J. R. R. Tolkien also be credited?
Absolutely! Think of it this way: What if a character says something hateful, or racist, or misogynistic, and we’ve only named the author of the work, without mentioning the character?
The author might be writing for a bad guy, or someone completely different from them, and not speaking for themselves at all. Someone who is not familiar with that novel, movie, or television show might think the author is hateful, racist, or misogynistic when that may not be true.
On the other hand, if a quote is attributed to a character without naming the author, anyone not familiar with them or their franchise may assume that the character is an actual person, confusing things further.
In order to make things as clear as possible, it’s best to attribute both the character and author, adding as necessary the title of the novel, television series, or movie.
This article gives great reasoning as well as examples of how and why attributions should be made to both parties.
Fact-Checking and Formatting Bible Quotes
We have a lot of clients who want to include Bible quotes in their products, and with the many versions of the Bible in print, it’s very important to make sure you’re using the correct version and format.
I reached out to a friend who is a pastor, and she recommended Bible Gateway. This is an excellent site where you can search for chapter and verse, if you know them, or keywords, in many versions of the Bible.
To format a quoted Bible verse correctly per Chicago Manual of Style, our go-to resource, you will need to include the version of the Bible in parentheses, either spelled out with correct capitalization, or abbreviated and capitalized. For example:
2 Kings 11:8 (New Revised Standard Version)
1 Cor. 6:1–10 (NRSV).
What to do When You Can’t Verify the Author of a Quote
Even with all of these tools at our disposal, we can’t always say for sure who is the author of a quote.
When that happens, there are a couple of options we can present to our client. If the quote is showing up absolutely everywhere on a Google search, at every possible site, and it always looks the same and is attributed to the same author, there is a very good chance that it’s correct. However, without truly being able to verify the accuracy of the quote and its attribution, we feel safest about the quote being Attributed to the author.
The other option is to say that the author is Unknown. Ultimately, we leave the decision of how to attribute a questionable quote to our client. Additionally, we always encourage clients to include language on the copyright page that indicates best efforts have been made to assure that all information included is correct and reliable.
Formatting Quotes Properly
When you are formatting your quote, you want to make sure that the author’s name is visibly separated from the quote. There are many ways to do this, depending on how you have formatted your document.
For planners, we usually place the attribution two spaces below the quote, and with an en or em dash in front of the author’s name.
While you are striving to make sure that the right author gets attribution for a quote, you also want to watch for spelling, punctuation, proper capitalization, and other issues.
Often, an older quote will feature what we now consider strange capitalization, spelling, or punctuation. If you’ve been able to correctly attribute the quote, leave it as the author wrote it.
For other quotes, you may see versions that are almost identical but find that there’s a comma in one version but not in others, or a sentence with a colon vs. a semicolon. We usually go with the version that shows up most often.
With each quote, we are doing everything we can to make sure it’s printed as the author wrote it!
While all of this might seem like a lot of effort, remember that you’re using someone else’s words in your product, and that you owe them the courtesy of respectfully, responsibly, and accurately sharing their work. This reflects well on you, and your customers will see the care and attention you put into your products, helping you to build a loyal brand base!
Written by: Amy Michel and Sarah Chaffee Paris
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