Quotation mark
Encyclopedia
Quotation marks or inverted commas (informally referred to as quotes or speech marks) are punctuation marks
at the beginning and end of a quotation, direct speech, literal title or name. Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning of a word or phrase than the one typically associated with it and are often used to express irony
. Quotation marks are sometimes used to provide emphasis in lieu of other typographic means, though this is usually considered incorrect.
Quotation marks are written as a pair of opening and closing marks in either of two styles: or , and may take "curly" or "straight" glyphs. Straight glyphs – or – are often preferred in online writing, while curly glyphs predominate in paper publishing.
Depending on the typeface, opening and closing quotation marks may be identical in form (called vertical, straight, or typewriter quotation marks), or may be distinctly left-handed and right-handed (typographic or, colloquially, curly quotation marks). The closing single quotation mark is identical or similar in form to the apostrophe
and similar to the prime
symbol. However, these three characters have quite different purposes.
, quotations were distinguished merely by indicating the speaker, and this can still be seen in some editions of the Bible. During the Renaissance
, quotations were distinguished by setting in a typeface
contrasting with the main body text (often Italic type
with roman
, or the other way round). 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.
In Early Modern English
, quotation marks were used only to denote pithy comments. They first began to quote direct speech in 1714. By 1749, single quotation marks, or inverted commas, were commonly used to denote direct speech.
. 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. Nesting levels up to five can be found in the Christian Bible
. 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 most cases, quotations that span multiple paragraph
s should be set as block quotations, and thus do not require quotation marks. Quotation marks are used for multiple-paragraph quotations in some cases, especially in narrative
s. 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
:
As noted below, in some older texts, the quotation mark is repeated every line, rather than every paragraph. The Spanish convention uses closing quotation marks at the beginning of all subsequent paragraphs beyond the first.
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. Comma
s 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 paraphrase
d speech. This is because a paraphrase 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 using a paraphrased idea, which could be open to interpretation.
If Hal says: "All systems are functional", then:
or apologetic words:
Quotes indicating irony, or other special use, are sometimes called scare
, sneer, shock, distance, or horror 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.
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
, 15th edition, acknowledges this type of use but, in section 7.58, cautions against its overuse: "Quotation marks are often used to alert readers that a term is used in a nonstandard, ironic, or other special sense... [T]hey imply ‘This is not my term,’ or ‘This is not how the term is applied.’ Like any such device, scare quotes lose their force and irritate readers if overused."
can emphasize that an instance of a word refers to the word itself rather than its associated concept.
A three-way distinction is occasionally made between normal use of a word (no quotation marks), referring to the concept behind the word (single quotation marks), and the word itself (double quotation marks):
The logic for this derives from the need to distinguish use forms, coupled with the mandate to retain consistent notation for like use forms. The switching between double and single quotes in nested citation quotes reveals the same literary device for reducing ambiguity.
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 the quotation marks – even in North American publications, which might otherwise prefer them inside:
As a rule, a whole publication would be italicised, 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, editorial sections of websites, etc.) would be written with quotation marks.
embedded in an actual name, or a false or ironic title embedded in an actual title; for example, Nat "King" Cole, Miles "Tails" Prower
, or John "Hannibal" Smith.
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.
In all major forms of English, question marks and exclamation marks are placed inside or outside quoted material depending on whether they apply to the whole sentence or just the quoted portion, but colons and semicolons are always placed outside.
The prevailing style in the United Kingdom – called British style, logical quotation or logical punctuation – is to include within quotation marks only those punctuation marks that appeared in the quoted material but otherwise to place punctuation outside the closing quotation marks. 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 ."
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, British placement depends on whether or not the quoted statement is complete or a fragment. According to the British style guide Butcher's Copy-editing, American style should be used when writing fiction. 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. Periods and commas that part of the person's speech are permitted inside the quotation marks regardless of whether the material is fiction,.
In the U.S., the prevailing style is called American style, typesetters' quotation, printers' rules, typographical usage, or traditional punctuation, whereby commas and periods are almost always placed inside closing quotation marks. This style of punctuation is common in the U.S. and Canada, and is the style usually recommended by The Chicago Manual of Style
and most other American style guides. However, many American style guides specific to certain specialties, such as legal writing and linguistics, prefer British style.
When dealing with words-as-words, short-form works and sentence fragments, this 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:
Many American style guides that explicitly permit periods and commas outside the quotation marks when the presence of the punctuation mark inside the quotation marks will lead to ambiguity, such as when describing keyboard input:
In both major styles, regardless of placement, only one end mark (?, !, or .) can end a sentence. Only the period, however, may not end a quoted sentence when it does not also end the enclosing sentence, except for literal text:
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 non-breaking space
( ) or thin space ( ) be inserted.
This is not common practice in mainstream publishing, which will generally use more precise kerning
, it is common in online writing, though using CSS
to create the spacing by kerning is more semantically appropriate in Web typography
than inserting extraneous spacing characters.
and double prime, e. g., when signifying feet and inches, arcminutes and arcseconds or minute
s and second
s, where the quotation mark symbolises the latter part of the pair. 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, the prime should be used instead (e. g., 5′ 6″, and 40° 20′ 50″). Prime and double prime are not present in most character sets, including ASCII and Latin-1, but are present in Unicode
, as characters and .
Double quotation marks, or pairs of single ones, are also often used to represent the ditto mark
.
Straight single and double quotation marks are used in most programming language
s 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 eat 'hot' dogs in Pascal one uses'eat hot dogs' . Other languages use an escape character
, often the backslash, as in'eat \'hot\' dogs' .
), and they do not include individual keys for left-handed and right-handed typographic quotation marks. However, most computer text-editing programs provide a "smart quotes" feature (see below) to automatically convert straight quotation marks into typographic punctuation. Generally, this smart quote feature is enabled by default. Some websites do not allow typographic quotation marks or apostrophes in posts (one such example being YouTube
). One can skirt these limitations, however, by using the HTML character codes or entities (though not on YouTube).
Punctuation
Punctuation marks are symbols that indicate the structure and organization of written language, as well as intonation and pauses to be observed when reading aloud.In written English, punctuation is vital to disambiguate the meaning of sentences...
at the beginning and end of a quotation, direct speech, literal title or name. Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning of a word or phrase than the one typically associated with it and are often used to express irony
Irony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
. Quotation marks are sometimes used to provide emphasis in lieu of other typographic means, though this is usually considered incorrect.
Quotation marks are written as a pair of opening and closing marks in either of two styles: or , and may take "curly" or "straight" glyphs. Straight glyphs – or – are often preferred in online writing, while curly glyphs predominate in paper publishing.
Depending on the typeface, opening and closing quotation marks may be identical in form (called vertical, straight, or typewriter quotation marks), or may be distinctly left-handed and right-handed (typographic or, colloquially, curly quotation marks). The closing single quotation mark is identical or similar in form to the apostrophe
Apostrophe
The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets...
and similar to the prime
Prime (symbol)
The prime symbol , double prime symbol , and triple prime symbol , etc., are used to designate several different units, and for various other purposes in mathematics, the sciences and linguistics...
symbol. However, these three characters have quite different purposes.
History
In the first centuries of typesettingTypesetting
Typesetting is the composition of text by means of types.Typesetting requires the prior process of designing a font and storing it in some manner...
, quotations were distinguished merely by indicating the speaker, and this can still be seen in some editions of the Bible. During the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
, quotations were distinguished by setting in a typeface
Typeface
In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
contrasting with the main body text (often Italic type
Italic type
In typography, italic type is a cursive typeface based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, such typefaces often slant slightly to the right. Different glyph shapes from roman type are also usually used—another influence from calligraphy...
with roman
Roman type
In typography, roman is one of the three main kinds of historical type, alongside blackletter and italic. Roman type was modelled from a European scribal manuscript style of the 1400s, based on the pairing of inscriptional capitals used in ancient Rome with Carolingian minuscules developed in the...
, or the other way round). 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
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
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.
In Early Modern English
Early Modern English
Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English...
, quotation marks were used only to denote pithy comments. They first began to quote direct speech in 1714. By 1749, single quotation marks, or inverted commas, were commonly used to denote direct speech.
Quotations and speech
Single or double quotation marks denote either speech or a quotation. Neither style is an absolute rule, though the double marks mostly preferred in the United States and Canada are also now favored by some major British journalism style guides, while single marks remain common in Britain and throughout the CommonwealthCommonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
. 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:
- 'Good morning, Frank', greeted Hal.
- "Good morning, Frank", greeted Hal.
For speech within speech, the other style is used as inner quotation marks:
- 'Hal said, "Good morning, Dave"', recalled Frank.
- "Hal said, 'Good morning, Dave'", recalled Frank.
Sometimes quotations are nested in more levels than inner and outer quotation. Nesting levels up to five can be found in the Christian Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. 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:
- "...EllipsisEllipsis is a series of marks that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word, sentence or whole section from the original text being quoted. An ellipsis can also be used to indicate an unfinished thought or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence...
'..."...' ... '..."...'..."
If such a passage is further quoted in another publication, then all of their forms have to be shifted up by one level.
In most cases, quotations that span multiple paragraph
Paragraph
A paragraph is a self-contained unit of a discourse in writing dealing with a particular point or idea. A paragraph consists of one or more sentences. The start of a paragraph is indicated by beginning on a new line. Sometimes the first line is indented...
s should be set as block quotations, and thus do not require quotation marks. Quotation marks are used for multiple-paragraph quotations in some cases, especially in narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
s. 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
Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England...
:
As noted below, in some older texts, the quotation mark is repeated every line, rather than every paragraph. The Spanish convention uses closing quotation marks at the beginning of all subsequent paragraphs beyond the first.
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. Comma
Comma
A comma is a type of punctuation mark . The word comes from the Greek komma , which means something cut off or a short clause.Comma may also refer to:* Comma , a type of interval in music theory...
s are also often used before and after the interruption, more often for quotations of speech than for quotations of text:
- "Hal", noted Frank, "said that everything was going extremely well."
Quotation marks are not used for paraphrase
Paraphrase
Paraphrase is restatement of a text or passages, using other words. The term "paraphrase" derives via the Latin "paraphrasis" from the Greek , meaning "additional manner of expression". The act of paraphrasing is also called "paraphrasis."...
d speech. This is because a paraphrase 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 using a paraphrased idea, which could be open to interpretation.
If Hal says: "All systems are functional", then:
- Incorrect: Hal said "everything was going extremely well."
- Correct: Hal said that everything was going extremely well.
Irony
Another common use of quotation marks is to indicate or call attention to ironicIrony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
or apologetic words:
- He shared his "wisdom" with me.
- The lunch lady plopped a glob of "food" onto my tray.
Quotes indicating irony, or other special use, are sometimes called scare
Scare quotes
Scare quotes are quotation marks placed around a word or phrase to indicate that it does not signify its literal or conventional meaning.- History :Use of the term "scare quotes" appears to have arisen at some point during the first half of the 20th century...
, sneer, shock, distance, or horror quotes. They are sometimes gestured in oral speech using air quotes
Air quotes
Air quotes, also called finger quotes or Ersatz quotes are virtual quotation marks formed in the air with one's fingers when speaking. This is typically done with hands held shoulder-width apart and at the eye level of the speaker, with the index and middle fingers on each hand flexing at the...
, or indicated in speech with a tone change or by replacement with supposed[ly] or so-called.
Signaling unusual usage
Quotation marks are also used to indicate that the writer realizes that a word is not being used in its current commonly accepted sense: Crystals somehow "know" which shape to grow into.In addition to conveying a neutral attitude and to call attention to a neologism, or slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
, or special terminology (also known as jargon
Jargon
Jargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, group, or event. The philosophe Condillac observed in 1782 that "Every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas." As a rationalist member of the Enlightenment he...
), quoting can also indicate words or phrases that are descriptive but unusual, colloquial, folksy, startling, humorous, metaphoric, or contain a pun
Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
: Dawkins's concept of a meme
Meme
A meme is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena...
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
Scare quotes
Scare quotes are quotation marks placed around a word or phrase to indicate that it does not signify its literal or conventional meaning.- History :Use of the term "scare quotes" appears to have arisen at some point during the first half of the 20th century...
).
The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 16 editions have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publishing...
, 15th edition, acknowledges this type of use but, in section 7.58, cautions against its overuse: "Quotation marks are often used to alert readers that a term is used in a nonstandard, ironic, or other special sense... [T]hey imply ‘This is not my term,’ or ‘This is not how the term is applied.’ Like any such device, scare quotes lose their force and irritate readers if overused."
Use–mention distinction
Either quotation marks or italic typeItalic type
In typography, italic type is a cursive typeface based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, such typefaces often slant slightly to the right. Different glyph shapes from roman type are also usually used—another influence from calligraphy...
can emphasize that an instance of a word refers to the word itself rather than its associated concept.
- Cheese is derived from milk.
- "Cheese" is derived from a word in Old English.
- Cheese has calcium, protein, and phosphorus.
- Cheese has three e
's.
A three-way distinction is occasionally made between normal use of a word (no quotation marks), referring to the concept behind the word (single quotation marks), and the word itself (double quotation marks):
- When discussing 'use', use "use".
The logic for this derives from the need to distinguish use forms, coupled with the mandate to retain consistent notation for like use forms. The switching between double and single quotes in nested citation quotes reveals the same literary device for reducing ambiguity.
Writing about language often uses italics for the word itself and single quotation marks for a gloss
Gloss
A gloss is a brief notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text, or in the reader's language if that is different....
, with the two not separated by a comma or other punctuation, and with strictly logical quotation around the gloss – extraneous terminal punctuation the quotation marks – even in North American publications, which might otherwise prefer them inside:
- Latin ovis 'sheep', canis 'dog', and equus 'horse' are nouns.
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. ClarkeArthur C. ClarkeSir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...
'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 BowieDavid BowieDavid Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
's "Space Oddity"
As a rule, a whole publication would be italicised, 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, editorial sections of websites, etc.) would be written with quotation marks.
- Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
- Dahl's "Taste" in Completely Unexpected Tales
Nicknames and false titles
Quotation marks can also offset a nicknameNickname
A nickname is "a usually familiar or humorous but sometimes pointed or cruel name given to a person or place, as a supposedly appropriate replacement for or addition to the proper name.", or a name similar in origin and pronunciation from the original name....
embedded in an actual name, or a false or ironic title embedded in an actual title; for example, Nat "King" Cole, Miles "Tails" Prower
Miles "Tails" Prower
, better known by his nickname , is a character, as well as the main deuteragonist in the Sonic the Hedgehog series of video games, comics, animated series and film released by Sega....
, or John "Hannibal" Smith.
Nonstandard usage
Quotes are sometimes used for emphasisEmphasis (typography)
In typography, emphasis is the exaggeration of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text—to emphasize them.- Methods and use :...
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.
Punctuation
With regard to quotation marks adjacent to periods and commas, there are two styles of punctuation in widespread use. While these two styles are most commonly referred to as "American" and "British" and some style sheets provide no other names, some American writers and organizations use the "British" style and vice versa. Both systems have the same rules regarding question marks, exclamation points, colons and semicolons. They differ on the treatment of periods and commas.In all major forms of English, question marks and exclamation marks are placed inside or outside quoted material depending on whether they apply to the whole sentence or just the quoted portion, but colons and semicolons are always placed outside.
- Did he say, "Good morning, Dave"?
- No, he said, "Where are you, Dave?"
- There are three major definitions of the word "gender": vernacular, sociological, and linguistic.
The prevailing style in the United Kingdom – called British style, logical quotation or logical punctuation – is to include within quotation marks only those punctuation marks that appeared in the quoted material but otherwise to place punctuation outside the closing quotation marks. 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 ."
When dealing with words-as-words, short-form works and sentence fragments, this style places periods and commas outside the quotation marks:
- "Carefree", in general, means "free from care or anxiety".
- The name of the song was "Gloria", which many already knew.
- She said she felt "free from care and anxiety".
When dealing with direct speech, British placement depends on whether or not the quoted statement is complete or a fragment. According to the British style guide Butcher's Copy-editing, American style should be used when writing fiction. 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. Periods and commas that part of the person's speech are permitted inside the quotation marks regardless of whether the material is fiction,.
- "Today," said Cinderella, "I feel free from care and anxiety." (fiction)
- "Today", said the Prime Minister, "I feel free from care and anxiety." (preferred in non-fiction)
- "Today I feel happy," said the woman, "carefree, and well." (regardless)
In the U.S., the prevailing style is called American style, typesetters' quotation, printers' rules, typographical usage, or traditional punctuation, whereby commas and periods are almost always placed inside closing quotation marks. This style of punctuation is common in the U.S. and Canada, and is the style usually recommended by The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 16 editions have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publishing...
and most other American style guides. However, many American style guides specific to certain specialties, such as legal writing and linguistics, prefer British style.
When dealing with words-as-words, short-form works and sentence fragments, this style places periods and commas inside the quotation marks:
- "Carefree," in general, means "free from care or anxiety."
- The name of the song was "Gloria," which many already knew.
- She said she felt "free from care and anxiety."
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:
- "Today," said Cinderella, "I feel free from care and anxiety." (fiction)
- "Today," said the Prime Minister, "I feel free from care and anxiety." (non-fiction)
Many American style guides that explicitly permit periods and commas outside the quotation marks when the presence of the punctuation mark inside the quotation marks will lead to ambiguity, such as when describing keyboard input:
- To use a long dash on Wikipedia, type in "
—".
In both major styles, regardless of placement, only one end mark (?, !, or .) can end a sentence. Only the period, however, may not end a quoted sentence when it does not also end the enclosing sentence, except for literal text:
- "Hello, world," she said. (American style)
- "Hello, world", she said. (British non-fiction)
- She said, "Hello, world." (both styles)
- "Hello, world!" she exclaimed. (both styles)
- "Is there anybody out there?" she asked into the void. (both styles)
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 non-breaking space
Non-breaking space
In computer-based text processing and digital typesetting, a non-breaking space or no-break space is a variant of the space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position. In certain formats , it also prevents the “collapsing” of multiple consecutive whitespace characters into a...
( ) or thin space ( ) be inserted.
- So Dave actually said, "He said, 'Good morning' "?
- Yes, he did say, "He said, 'Good morning.' "
This is not common practice in mainstream publishing, which will generally use more precise kerning
Kerning
In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning is the adjustment of the space between individual letter forms vs. tracking which is the uniform adjustment of spacing applied over a...
, it is common in online writing, though using CSS
Cascading Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics of a document written in a markup language...
to create the spacing by kerning is more semantically appropriate in Web typography
Semantic HTML
Semantic HTML is the use of HTML markup to reinforce the semantics, or meaning, of the information in webpages rather than merely to define its presentation . Semantic HTML is processed by regular web browsers as well as by many other user agents...
than inserting extraneous spacing characters.
Non-language related usage
Straight quotation marks (or italicized straight quotation marks) are often used to approximate the primePrime (symbol)
The prime symbol , double prime symbol , and triple prime symbol , etc., are used to designate several different units, and for various other purposes in mathematics, the sciences and linguistics...
and double prime, e. g., when signifying feet and inches, arcminutes and arcseconds or minute
Minute
A minute is a unit of measurement of time or of angle. The minute is a unit of time equal to 1/60th of an hour or 60 seconds. In the UTC time scale, a minute on rare occasions has 59 or 61 seconds; see leap second. The minute is not an SI unit; however, it is accepted for use with SI units...
s and second
Second
The second is a unit of measurement of time, and is the International System of Units base unit of time. It may be measured using a clock....
s, where the quotation mark symbolises the latter part of the pair. 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, the prime should be used instead (e. g., 5′ 6″, and 40° 20′ 50″). Prime and double prime are not present in most character sets, including ASCII and Latin-1, but are present in Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
, as characters and .
Double quotation marks, or pairs of single ones, are also often used to represent the ditto mark
Ditto mark
The ditto mark is a typographic symbol indicating that the word or figure above it are to be repeated. For example:It has Unicode code-point U+3003 , though in practice closing double quotation marks or straight double quotation marks are often used instead...
.
Straight single and double quotation marks are used in most programming language
Programming language
A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
s to delimit strings
String (computer science)
In formal languages, which are used in mathematical logic and theoretical computer science, a string is a finite sequence of symbols that are chosen from a set or alphabet....
or literal characters
Character (computing)
In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language....
, collectively known as string literals. In some languages (e. g. Pascal
Pascal (programming language)
Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...
) only one type is allowed, in some (e. g. C
C (programming language)
C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....
and its derivatives) both are used with different meanings and in others (e. g. Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
) 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 eat 'hot' dogs in Pascal one uses
Escape character
In computing and telecommunication, an escape character is a character which invokes an alternative interpretation on subsequent characters in a character sequence. An escape character is a particular case of metacharacters...
, often the backslash, as in
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 apostropheApostrophe
The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets...
), and they do not include individual keys for left-handed and right-handed typographic quotation marks. However, most computer text-editing programs provide a "smart quotes" feature (see below) to automatically convert straight quotation marks into typographic punctuation. Generally, this smart quote feature is enabled by default. Some websites do not allow typographic quotation marks or apostrophes in posts (one such example being YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
). One can skirt these limitations, however, by using the HTML character codes or entities (though not on YouTube).
| Macintosh key combinations | Windows key combinations | Linux (X X Window System The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers... ) keys |
Unicode point | HTML entity | HTML decimal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single opening | ‘ | + (on number pad) | or | U+2018 | ‘ |
‘ |
|
| Single closing (& apostrophe) | ’ | + (on number pad) | or | U+2019 | ’ |
’ |
|
| Double opening | “ | + (on number pad) | or | U+201C | “ |
“ |
|
| Double closing | ” | + (on number pad) | or | U+201D | ” |
” |
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 users being aware of it). These are known as smart quotes (“ ”). Straight quotation marks are also known as dumb quotes (" "). Some word processing programs incorrectly produce an opening single quotation mark in places where an apostrophe is required, for example, in abbreviated years like '08 for 2008.See also
- [[ʻOkina]]
- ISO 8859-1
- Quotation mark, non-English usageQuotation mark, non-English usageQuotation marks, also called quotes, speech marks or inverted commas, are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, or a phrase...
- Typewriter conventions
External links
- Curling Quotes in HTML, SGML, and XML
- Quotation marks in the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository
- ASCII and Unicode quotation marks – detailed discussion of the ASCII `backquote' problem
- Commonly confused characters
- Smart Quotes
- Smart Quotes vs. Dumb Quotes
- Quotation mark