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.
Another style of quoting is to use an em-dash to open a quote; this is used almost exclusively for quoting dialogues rather than for single statements, and is virtually always the one used for that purpose in works of fiction. In Polish printed books and publications, this dictionary-recommended style for guillemets (also known as »German quotes«) is used almost exclusively. Guillemet marks pointing outwards are used for definitions (mainly in scientific publications and dictionaries), as well as for enclosing spoken lines and indirect speech, especially in poetic texts. But the most frequent convention used in printed books for nested quotations is to style them in italics.
Do question marks and exclamation marks go inside quotes?
When the quoted material flows directly from your introductory text, no punctuation should be used before the quotation. Short quotations can generally be run in to the main text using quotation marks. Unless they are part of the original quotation, all marks other than commas or periods are placed outside the quotation marks. Commas and periods that are part of the overall sentence go inside the quotation marks, even though they aren’t part of the original quotation. Though not necessarily logical, the American rules for multiple punctuation with quotation marks are firmly established. But make sure to place closing quotation marks only at the end of the entire passage, not at the end of each paragraph.
What are quotation marks?
A closing quotation mark, », is added to the beginning of each new paragraph within a quotation. (For other languages employing dashes, see section Quotation dash below.) The dashes may be used entirely without quotation marks as well. The French news site L’Humanité uses straight quotation marks along with angle ones. The use of English quotation marks is increasing in French and usually follows English rules, for instance in situations when the keyboard or the software context doesn’t allow the use of guillemets. Neutral (straight) quotation marks, ” and ‘, are used widely, especially in texts typed on computers and on websites.
Smart quotes
(These exceptions are ignored by some Asian computer systems that systematically display quotation marks with the included spacing, as this spacing is part of the fixed-width characters.) A convention is the use of square brackets to indicate content between the quotation marks that has been modified from, or was not present in, the original material. In many cases, quotations that span multiple paragraphs are set as block quotations, and thus do not require quotation marks.
Other uses of quotations marks
- In the United States, the prevailing style is called American style, whereby commas and periods are almost always placed inside closing quotation marks.
- The American style is used by most newspapers, publishing houses, and style guides in the United States and, to a lesser extent, Canada as well.
- According to the Jargon File from 1983, American hackers (members of a subculture of enthusiastic programmers) switched to what they later discovered to be the British quotation system because placing a period inside a quotation mark can change the meaning of data strings that are meant to be typed character-for-character.
- Use quotation marks to draw attention to words or language in your writing.
- But the most frequent convention used in printed books for nested quotations is to style them in italics.
- It helps to break down the rules for when to use quotation marks by their function.
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 spinorhino casino form seen in printed matter.
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.
In Windows, if it is necessary to follow a space with a closing quotation mark when Smart Quotes is in effect, it is usually sufficient to input the character using the Alt code shown above rather than typing ” or ‘. Straight quotation marks are also retronymically called dumb quotes (“…”). There is generally no space between an opening quotation mark and the following word, or a closing quotation mark and the preceding word. In journals and newspapers, quotation mark double/single use often depends on the individual publication’s house style. British usage does vary, with some authoritative sources such as The Economist and The Times recommending the same usage as in the US, whereas other authoritative sources, such as The King’s English, Fowler’s, and New Hart’s Rules, recommend single quotation marks. For example, the journal Language of the Linguistic Society of America requires that the closing quotation mark precede the period or comma unless that period or comma is “a necessary part of the quoted matter”.
Using quotation marks to indicate height is informal yet widely accepted. If you write a person’s nickname alongside their given name, set it apart with quotation marks so the reader knows it’s not part of their formal name. Depending on the styling format, some writers alternatively use italics without quotation marks.
Quotation marks are also used to indicate the titles of creative works and highlight specific terms or phrases, often emphasizing tone. Quotation marks have many essential functions in grammar. While using numeric references can make a page more compatible with outdated browsers, using named references are safer for systems that handle multiple character encodings (i.e. RSS aggregators and search results). In addition, while the HTML 4, XHTML and XML specifications allow specifying numeric character references in either hexadecimal or decimal, SGML and older versions of HTML (and many old implementations) only support decimal references. If the encoding of the document supports direct representation of the characters, they can be used, but doing so can cause difficulties if the document needs to be edited by someone who is using an editor that cannot support the encoding.
- Single quotation marks are valid only within a quotation, as per Rule 7, above.
- Sometimes quotations are nested in more levels than inner and outer quotation.
- Both systems have the same rules regarding question marks, exclamation points, colons, and semicolons.
- Most computer keyboards do not have specific keys for curved quotation marks or angled quotation marks.
- This is a continuation of a typewriter tradition of using ticks for opening quotation marks; see Quotation mark § Typewriters and early computers.
With narration of direct speech, both styles retain punctuation inside the quotation marks, with a full stop changing into a comma if followed by attributive matter, also known as a speech tag or annunciatory clause. In the United States, the prevailing style is called American style, whereby commas and periods are almost always placed inside closing quotation marks. Periods and commas that are part of the person’s speech are permitted inside the quotation marks regardless of whether the material is fiction.
Other rules for quotation marks
In Finnish and Swedish, right quotes, called citation marks, ”…”, are used to mark both the beginning and the end of a quote. In Central Europe, the practice was to use the quotation mark pairs with the convexity aimed inward. In Western Europe the custom became to use the quotation mark pairs with the convexity of each mark aimed outward. (For additional characters used in other languages, see Quotation mark § Summary table.) Prime and double prime are not present in most code pages, including ASCII and Latin-1, but are present in Unicode, as characters U+2032 ′ PRIME and U+2033 ″ DOUBLE PRIME.
The double quotation mark is identical to the ditto mark in English-language usage. The Far East angle bracket quotation marks, 《…》, are also a development of the in-line angular quotation marks.citation needed On the other hand, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic and Ethiopic adopted the French “angular” quotation marks, «…». This was considered aesthetically unpleasing, while the in-line quotation marks helped to maintain the typographical color, since the quotation marks had the same height and were aligned with the lower case letters. In his edition of the works of Aristotle, which appeared in 1483 or 1484, the Milanese Renaissance humanist Francesco Filelfo marked literal and appropriate quotes with oblique double dashes on the left margin of each line. The double quotation mark derives from a marginal notation used in fifteenth-century manuscript annotations to indicate a passage of particular importance (not necessarily a quotation); the notation was placed in the outside margin of the page and was repeated alongside each line of the passage.