Quotation marks

In this case, it is necessary to set the translation off with commas. In the previous sentence, “letter” was properly spelled with two “t”s. Though marshaling little evidence, the authors claim that “over half of British prisoners come from single-parent households.” In her closing statement, the prosecutor spoke forcefully of the defendant’s “callous disregard for human life.”

Writing about letters and words

Since curved quotes are the typographically correct ones,citation needed word processors have traditionally offered curved quotes to users (at minimum as available characters). Most computer keyboards do not have specific keys for curved quotation marks or angled quotation marks. Using this character as the opening quote gave a typographic approximation of curved single quotes. Instead, to limit the number of characters (and keys) required, straight quotation marks were invented as a compromise. When typewriter keyboards were designed, curved quotation marks were not implemented. Different typefaces, character encodings and computer languages use various encodings and glyphs for quotation marks.

Specific language features

If you’re quoting a complete sentence, capitalize the first letter of the first word, just like a typical sentence. To indicate the measurement correctly, place the marks directly after the number with no space. No quotes are necessary if the nickname is how a famous person is most commonly recognized, as with many historical figures. The standard is to place the quoted nickname between the first name and the surname, although that’s not necessarily a rule.
The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the same glyph. Quotation marksA are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to identify direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. In the TeX typesetting program, left double quotes are produced by typing two back-ticks (“) and right double quotes by typing two apostrophes (”).

• In fiction, they’re used for writing dialogue or whenever a character says something out loud.
• There is no space on the internal side of quote marks, with the exception of 1⁄4 firet (≈ 1⁄4 em) space between two quotation marks when there are no other characters between them (e.g. ,„ and ’”).
• Certain types of works—but not all—use quotation marks around their titles so the reader knows the work is a reference.
• Place the period inside the quotation marks when a quotation comes at the end of a sentence.
• Scare quotes are used to show that the writer doubts the validity of a word.

Do question marks and exclamation marks go inside quotes?

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.
An indirect quote lets you capture or summarize what someone said or wrote without using their exact words. Quotation marks are a type of punctuation with several different functions. This convention was later standardized in RFC 3676, and was adopted subsequently by many email clients when automatically including quoted text from previous messages (in plain text mode). For example, many simple text editors only handle a few encodings or assume that the encoding of any file opened is a platform default, so the quote characters may appear as the generic replacement character � or “mojibake” (gibberish).

• Some computer software has the feature often called “smart quotes” which can, sometimes imperfectly, convert neutral quotation marks to typographic ones.
• Quotation marks are primarily used to indicate material that is being reproduced word for word, as well as some other important uses.
• In her closing statement, the prosecutor spoke forcefully of the defendant’s “callous disregard for human life.”
• Since the 2000s, the plain quotes have become more common.citation needed The 2013 revision of the SI-1452 standard for Hebrew keyboard, available since 2012 in Windows 8 and in desktop Linux systems, supports both systems, as does the Gboard keyboard for touchscreen devices.
• Using a breakable space of any kind often results in a quotation mark appearing alone at the beginning of a line, since the quotation mark is erroneously treated as an independent word.

The quotation can be introduced with a transitional phrase followed by a comma, helping separate the spoken words from the rest of the sentence. You can skip the comma before or after the quote for short quotes or phrases within a sentence if they flow naturally. Here, commas distinguish the spoken words from the rest of the sentence.

Usage

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.
Also note that, as a courtesy, there is visible space between adjacent single and double quotation marks. Use single quotation marks for quotations within quotations. If a question is within the quoted material, a question mark should be placed inside the quotation marks. Less commonly, single quotation marks are used in place of parentheses, in which case the translation is not set off with commas. Because the quoted material is set off from the main text, it is not necessary to use quotation marks.
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.

Quotation marks FAQs

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.
Use quotation marks to indicate a direct quote or passage copied verbatim from another source. Use quotation marks to draw attention to words or language in your writing. In Windows file and folder names, the straight double quotation mark is prohibited, as it is a reserved character. Thus, in at least some cases, transferring content containing curved quotes (or any other non-ASCII characters) from a word processor to another application or platform has been less troublesome, provided all steps in the process (including the clipboard if applicable) are Unicode-aware. (An example of this error appears in the advertisements for the television show ‘Til Death.) The two very different functions of this character can cause confusion, particularly in British styles,g in which single quotes are the standard primary.

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 spinorhino casino 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”.
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.