How to Use Quotation Marks: Rules and Examples

In France, by the end of the nineteenth century, the marks were modified to an angular shape. In most other languages, including English, the marginal marks dropped out of use in the last years of the eighteenth century. Quotation marks have a variety of forms in different languages and in different media.

• The angle shape was introduced later to make them easier to distinguish from apostrophes, commas and parentheses in handwritten manuscripts submitted to publishers.
• Here, we explain the must-know guidelines for proper quotation mark usage, including examples for each.
• Put the title of a short work—one that is or could be part of a larger undertaking—in quotation marks.
• Scare quotes (also known as sneer quotes) are used to cast doubt on a word or phrase, or to emphasize that the word or phrase is being used as a euphemism.
• The Chicago Manual of Style suggests 100 words or more as a general rule, but offers many factors other than length to be considered.
• Colons are typically placed outside quotation marks unless they are part of the quoted material.

American style

“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.
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 have many essential functions in grammar.
• 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.
• The comma is the mark most frequently used to introduce quoted material.
• Opening and closing quotation marks may be identical in form (called neutral, vertical, straight, typewriter, or «dumb» quotation marks), or may be distinctly left-handed and right-handed (typographic or, colloquially, curly quotation marks); see Quotation mark § Summary table for details.
• Here, commas distinguish the spoken words from the rest of the sentence.

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. 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. Likewise, the typographic opening single quotation mark is sometimes used to represent the ʻokina while either the typographic closing single quotation mark or the neutral single quotation mark may represent the prime symbol.

Scare quotes

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.

Why Quotation Marks Are Important

In American English, punctuation marks are typically placed inside quotation marks, with some exceptions. Quotation marks come in pairs, with an opening quotation mark at the beginning and a closing one at the end of the quote. If you want to discuss a word, phrase, or letter in writing without using its intended meaning, set it apart with quotation marks. Chicago style uses quotation marks for titles of shorter works, such as poems, articles, and chapters, but uses italics for books and periodical titles. AP style uses quotation marks for titles of creative works like books, movies, songs, TV shows, and other compositions. Use quotation marks to represent speech in written text.

Curved quotes within and across applications

The closing or right single quotation mark is identical in form to the apostrophe and similar to the prime symbol. Different varieties and styles of English have different conventions regarding whether terminal punctuation should be written inside or outside the quotation marks. A tendency to use single quotation marks in British writing is thought to have arisen after the mid-19th century invention of steam-powered presses and the consequent rise of London and New York as distinct, industrialized publishing centers whose publishing houses adhered to separate norms. If quotation marks are used inside another pair of quotation marks, then single quotation marks are used.
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.

Quotes within quotes

They signal the use of someone else’s words to help distinguish between the source’s voice and the quoted material. Several other Unicode characters with quotation mark semantics lack the character property. That is, to represent the spinorhino casino double curly quotes use “ and ”, and to represent single curly quotes use ‘ and ’. There are other considerations for including curved quotes in the widely used markup languages HTML, XML, and SGML. 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

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 English often uses single quotation marks to identify the outermost text of a primary quotation versus double quotation marks for inner, nested quotations. 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. Whether these are single or double depends on the context; however, many styles, especially for poetry, prefer the use of single quotation marks. While American style has periods and commas going inside single and double quotation marks, question marks follow logic.
If you’re quoting two or more paragraphs, place opening quotation marks at the beginning of each new paragraph. As with a colon, place a semicolon outside quotation marks regardless of whether it’s before or after a quotation. Place a comma inside the quotation mark if using a reporting clause after the quote. This signals the beginning and end of direct speech or quoted material and helps differentiate it from the surrounding text.