The ones who write scholarly articles for journals, of course. (The one thing I want to tell fiction authors is: if your characters are British nobility, they can't be Lord First-name and Lord Last-name at the same time.)
1. Ellipses indicate omitted words from within a quote. Therefore they serve no logical purpose at the beginnings or ends of quoted passages, so don't put them there.
2. Also, don't put brackets around ellipses. That was an innovation the MLA came up with some thirty years ago, as a way to distinguish supplied ellipses from ones in the original quoted text. But soon enough they realized that 1) original ellipses are uncommon, and can easily be handled with a note reading "ellipses in original"; 2) the brackets are bone-ugly. So they eliminated the rule. Get the message; it's been decades now.
3. Check the names of people you cite. Especially check Tolkien character names for accents and other diacritics.
4. Use the editions of Tolkien's books listed in our style sheet. If you don't have access to those, use ## for page numbers and we'll insert them. And for the sake of Ilúvatar and all the little Valar, if you're going to quote from The Book of Lost Tales, DON'T USE THE DEL REY PAPERBACKS! Like every mass-market paperback reprint ever made, they have entirely different pagination from the originals. And especially don't use them without telling us. You will just confuse people.
Oh, yes! Well said! :-)
ReplyDeleteAnd in the case of Tolkien's Elvish languages, I'd add that you need to check if you use the words correctly (e.g. that you get the singular/plural right – it is not ‘Melkor the Valar’, but ‘Melkor the Vala’). In my experience getting these details wrong negatively affects the readers perception of how convincing the argument is, even when not related to your argument.
Many authors these days also seem, when paraphrasing or summarising scenes and dialogue, to rely on adaptations rather than on the book. This also affects readers – certainly those familiar with Tolkien's work – generally lowering their perception of the credibility of the article.