Quotation marks in English

In the first centuries of typesetting, quotations were distinguished merely by indicating the speaker, and this can still be seen in some editions of the Christian Bible. During the Renaissance, quotations were distinguished by setting in a typeface contrasting with the main body text (often italic type vs roman). Long quotations were also set this way, at full size and full measure. 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. In some Baroque and Romantic-period books, they would be repeated at the beginning of every line of a long quotation. When this practice was abandoned, the empty margin remained, leaving the modern form of indented block quotation. == Usage ==

Quotations and speech Single or double quotation marks denote either speech or a quotation. Double quotes are preferred in the United States and Canada. In Australia, double quotes are preferred for indicating speech, except in the government and corporate sectors, where the preference is for single quotes. Single quotes are more usual in the United Kingdom, Ireland and South Africa, though double quotes are also common there, especially in . In New Zealand, both styles are used. A publisher's or author's style may take precedence over regional general preferences. The important idea is that the style of opening and closing quotation marks must be matched: For speech within speech, the other style is used as inner quotation marks: Sometimes quotations are nested in more levels than inner and outer quotation. In these cases, questions arise about the form (and names) of the quotation marks to be used. The most common way is to simply alternate between the two forms, thus: If such a passage is further quoted in another publication, then all of their forms have to be shifted up by one level. In many cases, quotations that span multiple paragraphs are set as block quotations, and thus do not require quotation marks. However, quotation marks are used for multiple-paragraph quotations in some cases, especially in narratives, where the convention in English is to give opening quotation marks to the first and each subsequent paragraph, using closing quotation marks only for the final paragraph of the quotation, as in the following example from Pride and Prejudice: When quoted text is interrupted, such as with the phrase he said, a closing quotation mark is used before the interruption, and an opening quotation mark after. Commas are also often used before and after the interruption, more often for quotations of speech than for quotations of text: Quotation marks are not used for indirect speech. This is because indirect speech can be a paraphrase; it is not a direct quote, and in the course of any composition, it is important to document when one is using a quotation versus when one is just giving content, which may be paraphrased, and which could be open to interpretation. For example, if Hal says: "All systems are functional", then, in indirect speech: Irony Another common use of quotation marks is to indicate or call attention to ironic, dubious, or non-standard words: Quotes indicating verbal irony, or other special use, are sometimes called scare quotes. They are sometimes gestured in oral speech using air quotes, or indicated in speech with a tone change or by replacement with supposed[ly] or so-called. Signalling unusual usage Quotation marks are also used to indicate that the writer realises that a word is not being used in its current commonly accepted sense: 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: Dawkins's concept of a meme could be described as an "evolving idea". People also use quotation marks in this way to distance the writer from the terminology in question so as not to be associated with it, for example to indicate that a quoted word is not official terminology, or that a quoted phrase presupposes things that the author does not necessarily agree with; or to indicate special terminology that should be identified for accuracy's sake as someone else's terminology, as when a term (particularly a controversial term) pre-dates the writer or represents the views of someone else, perhaps without judgement (contrast this neutrally distancing quoting to the negative use of scare quotes). The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition (2017), acknowledges this type of use but, in section 7.57, cautions against its overuse: "Quotation marks are often used to alert readers that a term is used in a nonstandard (or slang), ironic, or other special sense .... [T]hey imply 'This is not my term,' or 'This is not how the term is usually applied.' Like any such device, scare quotes lose their force and irritate readers if overused." Use–mention distinction Either quotation marks or italic type can emphasise that an instance of a word refers to the word itself rather than its associated concept. In linguistics Precise writing about language often uses italics for the word itself and single quotation marks for a gloss, with the two not separated by a comma or other punctuation, and with strictly logical quotation around the gloss – extraneous terminal punctuation outside the quotation marks – even in North American publications, which might otherwise prefer them inside: Titles of artistic works Quotation marks, rather than italics, are generally used for the titles of shorter works. Whether these are single or double depends on the context; however, many styles, especially for poetry, prefer the use of single quotation marks. • Short fiction, poetry, etc.: Arthur C. Clarke's "The Sentinel" • Book chapters: The first chapter of 3001: The Final Odyssey is "Comet Cowboy" • Articles in books, magazines, journals, etc.: "Extra-Terrestrial Relays", Wireless World, October 1945 • Album tracks, singles, etc.: David Bowie's "Space Oddity" As a rule, the title of a whole publication is italicised (or, in typewritten text, underlined), whereas the titles of minor works within or a subset of the larger publication (such as poems, short stories, named chapters, journal papers, newspaper articles, TV show episodes, video game levels, editorial sections of websites, etc.) are written with quotation marks. Nicknames and false titles 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. Nonstandard usage Quotes are sometimes used for emphasis in lieu of underlining or italics, most commonly on signs or placards. This usage can be confused with ironic or altered-usage quotation, sometimes with unintended humor. For example, For sale: "fresh" fish, "fresh" oysters, could be construed to imply that fresh is not used with its everyday meaning, or indeed to indicate that the fish or oysters are anything but fresh. As another example, ''Cashiers' desks open until noon for your "convenience"'' could be interpreted to mean that the convenience was for the bank employees, not the customers. == Order of punctuation==

With regard to quotation marks adjacent to periods and commas, there are two styles of punctuation in widespread use. These two styles are most commonly referred to as "American" and "British", or sometimes "typesetters' quotation" and "logical quotation". Both systems have the same rules regarding question marks, exclamation points, colons, and semicolons. However, they differ in the treatment of periods and commas. 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. logical quotation, and logical punctuation Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage provides an early example of the rule: "All signs of punctuation used with words in quotation marks must be placed according to the sense." When dealing with words-as-words, short-form works and sentence fragments, this style places periods and commas outside the quotation marks: When dealing with direct speech, according to the British style guide ''Butcher's Copy-editing'', if a quotation is broken by words of the main sentence, and then resumed, the punctuation before the break should follow the closing quote unless it forms part of the quotation. An exception may be made when writing fiction, where the first comma may be placed before the first closing quote. In non-fiction, some British publishers may permit placing punctuation that is not part of the person's speech inside the quotation marks but prefer that it be placed outside. Some American style guides specific to certain specialties also prefer the British style. This is done because it results in closer spacing and what is judged to be a cleaner appearance. 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. When dealing with words-as-words, short-form works, and sentence fragments, standard American style places periods and commas inside the quotation marks: This style also places periods and commas inside the quotation marks when dealing with direct speech, regardless of whether the work is fiction or non-fiction: Nevertheless, many American style guides explicitly permit periods and commas outside the quotation marks when the presence of the punctuation mark inside the quotation marks leads to ambiguity, such as when describing keyboard input, as in the following example: The American style is recommended by the Modern Language Association's MLA Style Manual, the American Psychological Association's APA Publication Manual, the University of Chicago's The Chicago Manual of Style, the American Institute of Physics's AIP Style Manual, the American Medical Association's AMA Manual of Style, the American Political Science Association's APSA Style Manual, the Associated Press' The AP Guide to Punctuation, and the Canadian Public Works' The Canadian Style. This style is also used in some British news and fiction. 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. Americans tend to apply quotations when signifying doubt of veracity (sarcastically or seriously), to imply another meaning to a word or to imply a cynical take on a paraphrased quotation, without punctuation at all. == Typographical considerations ==

Primary quotations versus secondary quotations Primary quotations are orthographically distinguished from secondary quotations that may be nested within a primary quotation. British English often uses single quotation marks to identify the outermost text of a primary quotation versus double quotation marks for inner, nested quotations. By contrast, American English typically uses double quotation marks to identify the outermost text of a primary quotation versus single quotation marks for inner, nested quotations. 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. In journals and newspapers, quotation mark double/single use often depends on the individual publication's house style. 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 an em 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 display quotation marks with the included spacing, as this spacing is part of the fixed-width characters.) There is generally no space between an opening quotation mark and the following word, or a closing quotation mark and the preceding word. 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. This is not common practice in mainstream publishing, which will generally use more precise kerning. It is more common in online writing, although using CSS to create the spacing by kerning is more semantically appropriate in Web typography than inserting extraneous spacing characters. Non-language-related usage Straight quotation marks (or italicised straight quotation marks) are often used to approximate the prime and double prime, e.g. when signifying feet and inches or arcminutes and arcseconds. 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, primes should be used instead (e.g. 5 6, and 40° 20 50). Prime and double prime are not present in most code pages, including ASCII and Latin-1, but are present in Unicode, as characters and . The HTML character entity references are and , respectively. Double quotation marks, or pairs of single ones, also represent the ditto mark. Straight single and double quotation marks are used in most programming languages to delimit strings or literal characters, collectively known as string literals. In some languages (e.g. Pascal) only one type is allowed, in some (e.g. C and its derivatives) both are used with different meanings and in others (e.g. Python) both are used interchangeably. In some languages, if it is desired to include the same quotation marks used to delimit a string inside the string, the quotation marks are doubled. For example, to represent the string in Pascal one uses 'eat hot dogs'. Other languages use an escape character, often the backslash, as in 'eat \'hot\' dogs'. In the TeX typesetting program, left double quotes are produced by typing two back-ticks () and right double quotes by typing two apostrophes (). This is a continuation of a typewriter tradition of using ticks for opening quotation marks; see . Typing quotation marks on a computer keyboard 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. In character encoding terms, these characters are labeled unidirectional. However, most computer text-editing programs provide a "smart quotes" feature to automatically convert straight quotation marks into bidirectional punctuation, though sometimes imperfectly . Generally, this smart quote feature is enabled by default, and it can be turned off in an "options" or "preferences" dialog. Some websites do not allow typographic quotation marks or apostrophes in posts. One can skirt these limitations, however, by using the HTML character codes or entities or the other key combinations in the following table. In Windows, AutoHotkey scripts can be used to assign simpler key combinations to opening and closing quotation marks. Smart quotes To make typographic quotation marks easier to enter, publishing software often automatically converts typewriter quotation marks (and apostrophes) to typographic form during text entry (with or without the user being aware of it). Out-of-the-box behavior on macOS, iPadOS and iOS is to make this conversion. These are known as smart quotes (''''). Straight quotation marks are also retronymically called dumb quotes (''''). The method for producing smart quotes may be based solely on the character preceding the mark. If it is a space or another of a set of hard-coded characters or if the mark begins a line, the mark will be rendered as an opening quote; if not, it will be rendered as a closing quote or apostrophe. This method can cause errors, especially for contractions that start with an apostrophe or text with nested quotations: 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 . == See also ==