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.
(1) To identify previously spoken or written words. This includes individual words, phrases, or separate clauses. However, no capitalization is necessary if you’re not quoting a complete sentence. In that case, it begins with a lowercase letter, even if the original sentence begins with a capitalized letter.
American style
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 ’”). Unlike English, French does not identify unquoted material within a quotation by using a second set of quotation marks. French uses angle quotation marks (guillemets, or duck-foot quotes), adding a ‘quarter-em space’a within the quotes. British publishing is regarded as more flexible about whether double or single quotation marks should be used. If another set of quotation marks is nested inside single quotation marks, double quotation marks are used again, and they continue to alternate as necessary (though this is rarely done).
- When a colon is part of the quoted material, place it inside the quotation marks to indicate that what follows it elaborates on or continues the thought introduced before the colon.
- It is also the mark most commonly used to introduce a block quotation.
- 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.
- They were used to quote direct speech as early as the late sixteenth century, and this practice became more common over time.
- This style is particularly common in Bulgarian, French, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
- Further, running dialogue does not use quotation marks beyond the first sentence, as changes in speaker are indicated by a dash, as opposed to the English use of closing and re-opening the quotation.
quotation mark American Dictionary
“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.
The usage of a pair of marks, opening and closing, at the level of lower case letters was generalized. Until then, literal quotations had been highlighted or not at the author’s discretion. Our copyists place this sign in the books of the people of the Church, to separate or to indicate the quotations drawn from the Holy Scriptures. Anyone in your organization can quickly create documents, presentations, and worksheets within a single, unified app experience. One can skirt these limitations, however, by using the HTML character codes or entities or the other key combinations in the following table.
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.
To set apart a word to show irony, sarcasm, or skepticism (scare quotes)
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.
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 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
In Australia, double quotes are preferred for indicating speech, except in the government and corporate sectors, where the preference is for single quotes. The typographic closing double quotation mark and the neutral double quotation mark are similar to – and sometimes stand in for – the ditto mark and the double prime symbol. 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. Although the word is the same, “Camelot” the song takes quotation marks because it’s part of a larger work—namely, a full-length show called Camelot. Periods and commas ALWAYS go inside quotation marks.
Quotation marks in English
With regard to quotation marks adjacent to periods and commas, there are two styles of punctuation in widespread use. Despite being semantically different, the typographic closing single quotation mark and the typographic apostrophe have the same visual appearance and code point (U+2019), as do the neutral single quote and typewriter apostrophe (U+0027). Never use single quotation marks in sentences like the previous three.
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 spinorhino casino on the styling format, some writers alternatively use italics without quotation marks.
- Use a semicolon inside quotation marks when it’s part of the quoted material.
- While American style has periods and commas going inside single and double quotation marks, question marks follow logic.
- Although not generally common in the Netherlands any more, double angle (guillemet) quotation marks are still sometimes used in Belgium.
- To indicate the measurement correctly, place the marks directly after the number with no space.
- In that case, it begins with a lowercase letter, even if the original sentence begins with a capitalized letter.
- In addition to being standard for second level quotes, guillemet quotes are sometimes used as first level quotes in headings and titles, but almost never for ordinary text in paragraphs.
- Such insertion of continuation quotation marks was rigidly maintained, even at a word hyphenation break.
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.
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.
Quotation mark
The following is an example of TeX input which yields proper curly quotation marks. All other forms of quotation marks, such as angled, lowered, inverted, were not provided by British or American typewriters. When corner brackets are being used for quotations, quote-within-quote segments are marked with white corner brackets. Neither the Portuguese language regulator nor the Brazilian prescribe a particular shape for quotation marks, they only prescribe when and how they should be used.
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.