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Quotation marks [A] are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to identify direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the same glyph. [3] Quotation marks have a variety of forms in different languages and in different media.
Quotation marks are written as a pair of opening and closing marks in either of two styles: single (‘...’) or double (“...”).
- Usage
- Typographical Considerations
- Typing Quotation Marks on A Computer Keyboard
- History
- Related Pages
- References
- Other Websites
Quotations and speech
Quotation marks show that part of the text is either a person speaking or a quotation. Double quotation marks are used as a rule in the United States, while both single and double quotation marks are used in the United Kingdom and other commonwealth countries. A publisher’s or author’s style can be considered as more important than national preferences. However, the style of opening and closing quotation marks must be matched: 1. ‘Good morning, Frank,’ said HAL. 2. “Good morning, Frank,” said...
Irony
Another common use of quotation marks is to indicate or call attention to ironicor mis-used words: 1. He shared his “wisdom” with me. 2. The lunch lady plopped a glob of “food” onto my tray. 3. She attempted to use her “strength” to lift the weight. Quotes indicating irony, or other special use, are sometimes called scare quotes. They are sometimes gestured in oral speech using air quotes.
Signaling unusual usage
Quotation marks are also used to indicate that the writer realizes that a word is not being used in its current commonly accepted sense. 1. Crystalssomehow “know” which shape to grow into. In addition to conveying a neutral attitude and to call attention to a neologism, or slang, or special terminology (also known as jargon), quoting can also indicate words or phrases that are descriptive but unusual, colloquial, folksy, startling, humorous, metaphoric, or contain a pun: People also use quota...
Punctuation
With quotation marks that are next to other punctuation marks, there are two main systems. They are called “American” and “British,” but some American writers and organizations use the British style and vice versa. Both systems have the same rules for question marks, exclamation points, colons, and semicolons. They have different rules for periods and commas. In both systems, question marks and exclamation marks are placed inside or outside quoted material depending on whether they are for th...
Spacing
In English, when a quotation follows other writing on a line of text, a space precedes the opening quotation mark unless the preceding symbol, such as a dash, requires that there be no space. When a quotation is followed by other writing on a line of text, a space follows the closing quotation mark unless it is immediately followed by other punctuation within the sentence, such as a colon or closing punctuation. (These exceptions are ignored by some Asian computer systems that systematically...
Non-language related usage
Straight quotation marks (or italicized straight quotation marks) are often used to approximate the prime and double prime. For example, when signifying feet and inches, arcminutes and arcseconds, or minutes and seconds, where the quotation mark symbolises the latter part of the pair. For instance, 5 feet and 6 inches is often written 5' 6", and 40 degrees, 20 arcminutes and 50 arcseconds is written 40° 20' 50". When available, however, the prime should be used instead (e. g., 5′ 6″, and 40°...
Standard English computer keyboard layouts inherited the single and double “straight” quotation marks from the typewriter (the single quotation mark also doubling as an apostrophe), and they do not include individual keys for left-handed and right-handed typographic quotation marks. However, most computer text-editing programs provide a “smart quot...
In the first centuries of typesetting, writers showed quoted speech by saying who was speaking. Some versions of the Bible still do it this way. During the Renaissance, writers showed quoted speech by using a typeface different from the main body text, like we use italicstoday. Long quotations were also set this way, at full size and full measure. ...
ʻOkina- an accent mark used in words from HawaiiBringhurst, Robert (2002). The Elements of Typographic Style, version 2.5. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks. ISBN 0-88179-133-4.Butcher, Judith (1992). Copy-editing: The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Authors and Publishers, third edition. pp 264–266. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-40074-0.Curling Quotes in HTML, SGML, and XML Archived 2005-02-06 at the Wayback MachineQuotation Marks and Direct Quotations. The use of quotation marks, also called inverted commas, is very slightly complicated by the fact that there are two types: single quotes (` ') and double quotes (" "). As a general rule, British usage has in the past usually preferred single quotes for ordinary use, but double quotes are now increasingly ...
Punctuation: Quotation Marks. Double quotation marks are used for direct quotations and titles of compositions such as books, plays, movies, songs, lectures and TV shows. They also can be used to indicate irony and introduce an unfamiliar term or nickname. Single quotation marks are used for a quote within a quote.
The comma ( , ) is used to disambiguate the meaning of sentences, by providing boundaries between clauses and phrases. For example, "Man, without his cell phone, is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of cell phone) and "Man: without, his cell phone is nothing" (emphasizing the importance of men) have greatly different meanings, as do "eats ...
You can use single inverted commas ‘ ’ or double quotation marks “ ” to punctuate the quotation. Just make sure you stick to the same punctuation mark and don’t swap between the two.
