How much can you quote without permission? No statute answers with a number. The US Copyright Office says no set amount of words, lines or pages is always allowed, and the UK has no statutory definition of fair dealing at all. What decides a case is why you quote, how much, from what kind of work, and what your use does to the original's market.
This is general information, not legal advice. For a contract, a quotation a book depends on, or a letter from a rights holder, ask your publisher or a lawyer. EdCitation publishes this guide; we read the US and UK statutes, the Copyright Office's pages and Fair Use Index, the Intellectual Property Office's guidance and three publishers' permissions rules on 27 September 2026.
Copyright and citing are separate duties, and a writer who quotes owes both. EdCitation handles the citing: Cite a source builds the reference for every book, article or page you quote, from the publisher's record, and Check plagiarism shows the passages in a draft that match published or web text. EdCitation never writes any part of anyone's work, so every sentence around a quotation stays yours.
How much can I quote without permission?
As much as the law's exceptions allow for your purpose, and nobody can turn that into a word count in advance. The Copyright Office's FAQ says no legal rule permits "a specific number of words", notes or percentage of a work, and that in cases of doubt it recommends getting permission (U.S. Copyright Office, n.d.-a). The Intellectual Property Office (2021) calls fair dealing "a matter of fact, degree and impression in each case".
The numbers you meet are therefore house rules. Taylor & Francis (n.d.-a) tells book authors that fair use and fair dealing deliberately have no definition such as "up to 400 words". Oxford University Press (2014), in its guide for reference-book authors, asks for permission when one extract of a book-length prose work passes 400 words, when several pass 800 in total, or when any one of a series passes 300. That is the press's rule for its own authors, not a safe amount under the law.
The MIT Press, Chicago and Carcanet draw their lines elsewhere again, compared in how to cite sources in a non-fiction book. If your draft leans on quotation for other reasons, read too many quotations and how to fix them.
What is fair use in the US?
Fair use is the US defence that lets a court find an unlicensed use lawful after weighing four factors in 17 U.S.C. § 107. The section names criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research, and the words "such as" before that list keep it open.
The four factors
- Purpose and character. A use that adds something new, with a further purpose, is favoured, and the Copyright Office calls that "transformative". Non-profit education weighs better than commercial use, without settling the question (U.S. Copyright Office, n.d.-c).
- Nature of the work. Creative works such as novels and songs get stronger protection than factual ones, and unpublished work is less likely to be used fairly.
- Amount and substantiality. Both how much and which part. Even a short passage counts against you when it is the "heart" of the work.
- Effect on the market. Whether the use harms the existing or future market for the original.
The statute adds that being unpublished does not by itself bar fair use (Copyright Act of 1976). None of the four factors mentions credit.
A few hundred words that were not fair use
The Fair Use Index's summary of Harper & Row v. Nation Enterprises, a Supreme Court case of 1985, shows how little a word count settles. The Nation obtained Gerald Ford's unpublished memoirs before Time could serialise them and ran a 2,250-word article containing at least 300 to 400 words quoted verbatim (U.S. Copyright Office, n.d.-b). The Court found no fair use: the passages were a small share of the book but "the heart of the book", the work was unpublished, and the article competed for the market Time had paid for.
Using the Fair Use Index
The Fair Use Index is the Office's searchable collection of summarised court opinions, tagged by category and kind of work. It does not include every opinion, and it was last updated in July 2026 (U.S. Copyright Office, n.d.-d). Filter by "Textual work" and by your purpose, such as review or education, and read how cases like yours came out. The Office cannot give individuals legal advice on fair use, so the Index shows how courts have reasoned, not what one would decide about your book.
What does fair dealing allow in the UK?
Fair dealing allows a use for a purpose the Act names, only as far as a fair use of the work would go, and almost always with a sufficient acknowledgement. Section 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 holds the writer's exceptions.
Criticism, review and quotation
- Criticism or review, section 30(1). Any kind of work may be quoted to criticise or review it or another work, once the work has been made available to the public, with a sufficient acknowledgement.
- Quotation, section 30(1ZA). Since 1 October 2014 a quotation for any other purpose can be lawful on four conditions: the work has been made available to the public, the use is fair dealing, the extract is no longer than the purpose needs, and it is acknowledged. Section 30(4) makes a contract term that would stop such a quotation unenforceable.
- Reporting current events, section 30(2). Any work except a photograph.
- Parody, caricature and pastiche. A separate exception for limited amounts, again only as far as fair dealing goes (Intellectual Property Office, 2021).
The IPO names two questions a court asks: does the use substitute for the original and cost its owner income, and was the amount taken reasonable and necessary?
What a sufficient acknowledgement is
Section 178 defines it: the work identified by its title or another description, and its author named, unless the work was published anonymously or, if unpublished, the author cannot be found by reasonable inquiry. A full reference names both. That meets one condition of fair dealing, not all of them.
Fair use and fair dealing side by side
The two systems ask different questions, and a book sold in both countries has to satisfy both.
| Question | US: fair use | UK: fair dealing | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Is any number of words always allowed? | No formula of words, lines or pages | No; "fact, degree and impression" | U.S. Copyright Office (n.d.-d); Intellectual Property Office (2021) |
| For which purposes? | An open list: criticism, comment, news, teaching, scholarship, research | Named ones: criticism, review, quotation, current events, parody, caricature, pastiche | 17 U.S.C. § 107; CDPA 1988, s. 30 |
| Must the source be credited? | Not one of the factors; publishers require it anyway | Yes: title and author | Clemson University Press (2024); CDPA 1988, s. 178 |
| Unpublished work? | Not barred, but weighs against | For criticism, review and quotation, it must have been made available to the public | 17 U.S.C. § 107; CDPA 1988, s. 30 |
| Can a contract forbid a fair quotation? | Section 107 does not say | No: the term is unenforceable | CDPA 1988, s. 30(4) |
| Poems and song lyrics? | No special rule; songs are creative works | No special rule | Publishers' rules, below |
| The reference itself? | Built free in Cite a source | The same | EdCitation |
Is citing a source enough for copyright?
No. Citing answers plagiarism, which is about credit; copyright is about permission, and a perfect reference grants no licence. Ohio State University Libraries (n.d.) puts plagiarism under academic integrity codes, enforced by instructors and institutions, and infringement under law, brought by the owner.
Four cases from Ohio State's handout
- Plagiarism, not infringement: uncredited sentences from Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which is out of copyright.
- Infringement, not plagiarism: a website decorated with images found online, each credited.
- Both: a recently published story posted on a blog as your own.
- Neither: short, marked and cited quotations from scholarly articles in a research paper, which the handout calls a widely accepted fair use.
Permission does not replace citation either. Clemson University Press (2024) reminds authors that a fair use must still credit its source, and Taylor & Francis (n.d.-a) asks for the credit line in the rights holder's own wording. For credits on images and video, see citing sources in a blog, newsletter or video.
What copyright does not cover
Circular 33 lists what US copyright does not protect, including ideas, methods and the titles of works, a song's title among them (U.S. Copyright Office, 2021). An idea taken from a book needs no permission and still needs a citation. Hirtle (2026) gives works published in the US before 1931 as public domain; in the UK a written work is protected until 70 years after its author's death (GOV.UK, n.d.). A reprint's new introduction or translation can carry a copyright of its own.
Can you quote song lyrics or poetry in a book?
Usually only with written permission, and several publishers never rely on fair use or fair dealing for them. A short poem or song is a whole work in a few lines, so a couplet can be a large share of it. We quote no lyric or poem here; this is what the publishers say:
- Taylor & Francis (n.d.-b), for journal articles: a quotation from a song lyric or poem is never treated as fair use and always needs written permission.
- Oxford University Press (2014): permission for any poem or piece of music still in copyright, and always for a newspaper headline.
- Clemson University Press (2024): in the US, more than one line of a copyrighted lyric needs the music publisher's permission, and even a single line from a famous poet or songwriter is often hard and costly to clear. It sends authors to ASCAP and BMI to find a song's rights holder.
- Taylor & Francis's books (n.d.-a): no epigraphs, since a decorative quotation is not fair use or fair dealing.
For a novel, memoir or blog, the open road is to name the song and the singer, which needs no permission, and describe what the lines do. If the exact words matter, clear them before the manuscript goes in, because a press that finds uncleared lines removes them.
How do you clear permission for a quotation?
Keep a log from the first draft. These steps follow Taylor & Francis's permissions guide, in our words, with the EdCitation tool for each clerical step.
- List every quotation with its page, and build its reference in Cite a source from the ISBN, DOI or web address.
- Ask whether you need the words. Describing a work is often enough, and a cited paraphrase raises no permission question; paraphrase, quote or summarise shows how.
- Check the copyright status of the text you actually hold, edition and translation included.
- Find the rights holder: usually the publisher first; for songs, ASCAP or BMI.
- Ask in writing for the rights your contract needs. Taylor & Francis asks for non-exclusive, worldwide English-language rights in print and ebook for the life of the edition, and unless agreed otherwise the author pays the fees.
- Keep the permission and its credit line, worded as the rights holder asks.
- Cite the quotation anyway.
If you rely on fair use instead, Clemson asks for a fair-use checklist for every such quotation.
How does EdCitation help a writer who quotes?
EdCitation is the best tool we know for the citing half of quoting, because each entry it builds comes from a publisher's or library's record, never from memory, as a chatbot's does. It leaves fair use, permissions and every word of the book to you.
A reference built from an ISBN
On 27 September 2026 we gave Cite a source the ISBN of Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi's Reclaiming Fair Use, 9780226374192. It found the second edition in Open Library's record and returned, in Chicago 18 author-date:
Aufderheide, Patricia, and Peter Jaszi. 2018. Reclaiming Fair Use: How to Put Balance Back in Copyright. 2nd ed. The University of Chicago Press.
The in-text form was (Aufderheide and Jaszi 2018); for a quotation, add a comma and the page from your copy after the year. The same request gave APA 7, MLA 9, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver, the APA title in sentence case. No account is needed; with a free one, the entries stay in a saved reference list.
Tracing a quotation and checking the list
Find sources takes a topic, or the claim one of your sentences makes, and searches roughly 300 million published works; that helps trace a line quoted second-hand back to where it first appeared. Verify references then looks up the finished list at no cost, marking each entry verified, "check this" or not found; an entry it could not reach is labelled as unchecked, never as not found.
Check plagiarism before the manuscript goes in
Check plagiarism, part of Pro at $8 a month, highlights every passage of a draft that matches published or web text, with the source it matches: the quotation that lost its marks between notes and draft, the paraphrase that stayed too close. It runs on credits (Pro includes 240 a month), shows the cost first, uses nothing if a check fails, and only you see the report. A match is proof of nothing, legal or otherwise. Plans are on Pricing.
Everything above is general information about the law and publishers' rules, not legal advice about your work. When a quotation matters, ask your publisher or a lawyer, and file their answer with your permissions log.
Quick questions
How many words can I quote without permission?
No law gives a number, in the US or the UK. Publishers set house thresholds, such as Oxford University Press's 400 words for one extract in its reference books, but those are never a safe amount.
Is it fair use if I credit the author?
Not by itself. Credit is not one of the four US factors, and in the UK an acknowledgement is only one condition of fair dealing; purpose, amount and market effect still decide.
Can I quote a line of a song in my novel?
Usually only with permission. Taylor & Francis never treats a lyric as fair use, and Clemson University Press says more than one line needs the music publisher's permission; the title can be named freely.
Is fair dealing the same as fair use?
No. US fair use is an open four-factor test for any purpose; UK fair dealing covers named purposes, such as criticism, review, quotation and news, and nearly always needs an acknowledgement.
Can EdCitation tell me whether a quotation is fair use?
No; this guide is general information, not legal advice. EdCitation builds the quotation's reference in Cite a source, and Check plagiarism shows which passages match other text.
References
- Clemson University Press. (2024). An author's guide [PDF]. https://libraries.clemson.edu/press/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/04/CUP-AUTHOR%E2%96%A1EDITOR-GUIDE-2024.pdf
- Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107. Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107
- Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, c. 48, s. 30. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/30
- Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, c. 48, s. 178. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/178
- GOV.UK. (n.d.). How long copyright lasts. https://www.gov.uk/copyright/how-long-copyright-lasts
- Hirtle, P. B. (2026, January 1). Copyright term and the public domain. Cornell University Library. https://guides.library.cornell.edu/copyright/publicdomain
- Intellectual Property Office. (2021, January 4). Exceptions to copyright. GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright
- Ohio State University Libraries. (n.d.). What's the difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement? [Handout]. https://library.osu.edu/sites/default/files/2025-04/plagiarism_vs_copyright_handout_ac_v3_2025.pdf
- Oxford University Press. (2014). Guide for authors and editors: Oxford Paperback Reference [PDF]. https://www.oxfordreference.com/fileasset/files/QuickReference_AuthorGuidelines.pdf
- Taylor & Francis. (n.d.-a). Permissions guide [PDF]. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/rsc/downloads/Permissions_guide.pdf
- Taylor & Francis. (n.d.-b). Using third party content in your article. Author Services. https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/publishing-your-research/writing-your-paper/using-third-party-material/
- U.S. Copyright Office. (2021). Works not protected by copyright (Circular 33). https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf
- U.S. Copyright Office. (n.d.-a). Fair use (FAQ). https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html
- U.S. Copyright Office. (n.d.-b). Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539 (1985) [Fair Use Index summary]. https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/summaries/harperrow-nationmagazine-1985.pdf
- U.S. Copyright Office. (n.d.-c). More information on fair use. https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html
- U.S. Copyright Office. (n.d.-d). U.S. Copyright Office fair use index. https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/