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If an original quotation includes a word that may cause confusion, is it OK that I write "Blabla (my clarification of the meaning of this word) blabla"?

My explanation is not a part of the original quotation, so I was wondering whether it is OK to put it within the quotation mark?

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Inserting a few explanatory words is fine, but you should use square brackets instead of parentheses. Just take care not to alter the original text's meaning.

Writing Commons offers the following:

Quotation with brackets used correctly around an explanatory insert:

“[D]riving is not as automatic as one might think; in fact, it imposes a heavy procedural workload [visual and motor demands] on cognition that . . . leaves little processing capacity available for other tasks” (Salvucci and Taatgen 107).

Note: Brackets are placed around the inserted words in this example to provide further explanation of the “procedural workload” discussed in the original text.

Source: https://writingcommons.org/article/inserting-or-altering-words-in-a-direct-quotation/

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    It would be useful to copy the relevant part of the website (keeping the link and source information) so that this answer is still helpful even if the website changes or goes down in the future.
    – dbmag9
    Commented Sep 20, 2022 at 22:14
  • @dbmag9 thank you, I'll do that!
    – stacknik
    Commented Sep 20, 2022 at 23:41
  • An additional note: At the end of the example quotation within my own quotation of Writing Commons, we find a parenthetical citation. Citations are a separate topic, and that component should be considered irrelevant to this question.
    – stacknik
    Commented Sep 21, 2022 at 0:03

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