For various reasons, you may feel compelled to throw in a lot of quotations in your technical documents. It's true: direct quotation can seem to provide authority to your documents, but so can paraphrasing and summarizing (covered below).
However you use your borrowed information—where directly quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing—remember that you must cite your sources. That's called documenting your sources of borrowed information. That is covered in documentation.
Reasons for Direct Quotations
In technical texts, you can reduce your reasons for direct quotations to these:
Authority speaks:
I didn't say that—not me!
Perfect expression
Crazy, quirky expression:
Methods of Direct Quotation
Block direct quotation:
Complete-sentence direct quotation:
Phrasal direct quotation:
Alternatives to Direct Quotation
Paraphrasing:
Summarizing:
Direct Quotations: Phrasing and Punctuation
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