This usage can be confused with ironic or altered-usage quotation, sometimes with unintended humor. Quotation marks can also set off a nickname embedded in an actual name, or a false or ironic title embedded in an actual title; for example, Nat “King” Cole, Frank “Chairman of the Board” Sinatra, or Simone Rizzo “Sam the Plumber” DeCavalcante. Quotation marks, rather than italics, are generally used for the titles of shorter works. A publisher’s or author’s style may take precedence over regional general preferences. When this practice was abandoned, the empty margin remained, leaving the modern form of indented block quotation.
- Quotation marks were first cut in metal type during the middle of the sixteenth century, and were used copiously by some printers by the seventeenth.
- Primary quotations are orthographically distinguished from secondary quotations that may be nested within a primary quotation.
- It is also similar to—and often used to represent—the double prime symbol.
- In case of quoted material inside a quotation, rules and most noted style manuals prescribe the use of different kinds of quotation marks.
- In most other languages, including English, the marginal marks dropped out of use in the last years of the eighteenth century.
- As with a colon, place a semicolon outside quotation marks regardless of whether it’s before or after a quotation.
These same systems often drew the backtick (the free standing character U+0060 ` GRAVE ACCENT) as an ‘open quote’ glyph (usually a mirror image so it still sloped in the direction of a grave accent). The Unicode standard introduced a separate character U+2015 ― HORIZONTAL BAR to be used as a quotation dash. In addition to being standard for second level quotes, guillemet quotes are sometimes used as first level quotes in headings and titles, but almost never for ordinary text in paragraphs. Guillemet marks pointing inwards are used for highlights and in case a quotation occurs inside a quotation.
American style
- Periods and commas are placed outside the prime and double prime marks.
- If a quotation functions as a subject or object in a sentence, it might not need a comma.
- (2) Quotation marks to signify so-called or alleged
- Style varies, but at a minimum a block quotation should have a bigger left-hand margin than the main text.
- If such a passage is further quoted in another publication, then all of their forms have to be shifted up by one level.
- Historically, support for curved quotes was a problem in information technology, primarily because the widely used ASCII character set did not include a representation for them.f
The following is an example of TeX input which yields proper curly quotation marks. All other forms of quotation marks, such as angled, lowered, inverted, were not provided by British or American typewriters. When corner brackets are being used for quotations, quote-within-quote segments are marked with white corner brackets. Neither the Portuguese language regulator nor the Brazilian prescribe a particular shape for quotation marks, they only prescribe when and how they should be used.
Typographic forms
Poland, adopted a variant with the convexity of the closing mark aimed rightward like the opening one, „…”. Some neighboring regions adopted the German curved marks tradition with lower–upper alignment, while some, e.g. Some authors claim that the reason for this was a practical one, in order to get a character that was clearly distinguishable from apostrophes, commas, and parentheses.
Also, any punctuation otherwise required by the structure of the sentence is placed outside the single quotation marks. Using a period elsewhere inside quotation marks is correct if your quoted material includes multiple sentences. For example, if you’re quoting a passage that already features a quote, use double quotation marks for the main quote and single quotation marks for the quote within a quote. In American English, single quotation marks are used only for quotes that appear inside other quotes. One of the most common points of confusion with quotes is when to use single versus double quotation marks.
When to use quotation marks
“The best investments today”, according to Smith, “are commodities and emerging-market stocks”. “The best investments today,” according to Smith, “are commodities and emerging-market stocks.” Find the quotation you need on our sister site funnyQuotation.com. (2) Quotation marks to signify so-called or alleged (4) To show that a word refers to the word itself not the word’s meaning.
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In these cases, questions arise about the form (and names) of the quotation marks to be used. In Early Modern English, quotation marks were used to denote pithy comments. Because typewriter and computer keyboards lack keys to directly enter typographic quotation marks, much of typed writing has neutral quotation marks. Typographic quotation marks are usually used in manuscript and typeset text. Single quotation marks are valid only within a quotation, as per Rule 7, above. Put the title of a short work—one that is or could be part of a larger undertaking—in quotation marks.
Both quotation marks and italics are used for the titles of works, but certain types of works use only quotes, and others use only italics. Use sic within quotations to indicate that any spelling, punctuation, grammatical errors, or unusual phrases are part of the original quoted material. Place a comma inside the quotation marks at the spinorhino casino end of a quoted phrase. If you’re using the same word, sentence, or phrase as another author, put those words between quotation marks.
Curved quotes within and across applications
In English writing, quotation marks or inverted commas, also known informally as quotes, talking marks, speech marks, quote marks, quotemarks or speechmarks, are punctuation marks placed on either side of a word or phrase in order to identify it as a quotation, direct speech or a literal title or name. When the material being quoted contains a quotation within a quotation (i.e., something in single quotation marks), use double quotation marks. In all major forms of English, question marks, exclamation marks, semicolons, and any other punctuation (with the possible exceptions of periods and commas, as explained in the sections below) are placed inside or outside the closing quotation mark depending on whether they are part of the quoted material. When a run-in quotation contains quotation marks within the quoted material itself, use single quotation marks in their place. Most large newspapers have kept these low-high quotation marks, „ and ”; otherwise, the alternative form with single or double English-style quotes is now often the only form seen in printed matter.
Quotation Marks
Some computer software has the feature often called “smart quotes” which can, sometimes imperfectly, convert neutral quotation marks to typographic ones. Note that the period goes inside both the single and double quotation marks. Use double quotation marks to set off a direct (word-for-word) quotation.
However, most computer text-editing programs provide a “smart quotes” feature to automatically convert straight quotation marks into bidirectional punctuation, though sometimes imperfectly (see § Smart quotes). 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. Straight single and double quotation marks are used in most programming languages to delimit strings or literal characters, collectively known as string literals. When a double quotation mark or a single quotation mark immediately follows the other, proper spacing for legibility may suggest that a thin space ( ) or larger non-breaking space ( ) be inserted. 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.
Quotation marks can be used when referring to a specific word or letter. The unpunctuated lead-in is most commonly used with run-in quotations, but it is also appropriate for introducing block quotations that flow directly from the introductory text. A very short quotation may also be introduced without punctuation. A period can be used to introduce a block quotation when the introductory text stands on its own as a complete sentence. It is also the mark most commonly used to introduce a block quotation. Longer quotations should be set off from the main text, and are referred to as block quotations.
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