Crash Victims Info

How do you add words to a quote that are needed for it to make sence?

For instance if I'm quoting someone who was giving a speech on car crashes and they said "2.7 million people were killed in 2004." To add the words "in automobile accidents" so people know what the quote is about do I write: "2.7 million people were killed (in automobile accidents) in 2004" ?

Public Comments

1. Brackets ([ ]) are appropriate in this situation. Brackets are used to enclose info needed for clarity in a quote, parentheses () are used to enclose info needed for clarity in your own sentences.
2. ADDING INFORMATION TO A QUOTATION You can add information to a quotation in order to define a word or phrase, to clarify the quotation's information, or to make a brief comment on the quotation's information. The information that you add always should be brief; reserve your major comments on the quotation's information to be placed after the quotation ends. Show any added information by placing that added information in square brackets within the quote. If your computer or typewriter does not have square bracket keys, then draw the brackets in. You canNOT substitute parentheses for brackets, since they carry a different meaning. (Parentheses indicate that the added information is part of the direct quotation itself and not your own.) For example: Holmes stated that "The chair on which the body was found was covered in a formerly yellow, now a brownish, blood-stained tabaret [upholstery with satin stripes]" (5). [MLA format] (In this case, you'd need to define "tabaret" for a general reading public.) Or: "He [William Dean Howells] was 'fierce to shut out' of his study the voices and faces of his family in 'pursuit of the end' which he 'sought gropingly, blindly and with very little hope but with an intense ambition, and a courage that gave way under no burden, before no obstacles'" (Kirk and Kirk xxxvi). [MLA format] (In this case, you'd need to clarify the person to whom the "he" refers.) Or: "Stephen Crane's experience as a journalist [as Berryman affirms] provided the impetus for his fiction" (Walcutt 22). [MLA format] (In this case, the writer provides a brief comment on the information to let the reader know that two major critics of Crane agree.)