Verify quote lengths and attribution.
Two separate questions apply to any quotation. The first is proportion: how much of the source work you are reproducing, expressed as a share of its total length. Institutions and publishers commonly set an internal threshold — often well under one percent — beyond which written permission is expected. The second question is attribution, and it is not a matter of degree: an unattributed quotation is plagiarism whether it is six words or six hundred, and no proportion is small enough to make it acceptable. Length also determines formatting, with 40 words or more conventionally set as an indented block.
Proportion quoted
Share % = quotation words / total words in the source x 100
Permitted length
Maximum words = source total words x institutional threshold%
Not legal advice. Quotation limits, fair use and fair dealing depend on jurisdiction, the nature of the work, the proportion used and the purpose, and no word count guarantees permissibility. Consult your institution's academic integrity guidance, your publisher, or a qualified intellectual property lawyer before reproducing substantial extracts.
No. Proportion, the nature of the work and the purpose all matter, and there is no bright-line word count that is automatically permissible — quoting eight words of a short poem can be a larger proportion than a paragraph of a novel. Check your institution's or publisher's guidance.
No. Citation addresses academic integrity; it does not address copyright. Reproducing a substantial proportion of a work requires permission from the rights holder regardless of how carefully you attribute it. The two obligations are separate and both apply.