Quotation Marks Punctuation Rules and Examples
They also require the proper context so the reader understands why the writer doubts or is qualifying the word’s usage. In fiction, they’re used for writing dialogue or whenever a character says something out loud. This is most common in nonfiction writing when a writer uses a phrase or sentence from a preexisting source, usually to support their thesis.
Usage
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. In the United States, the prevailing style is called American style, whereby commas and periods are almost always placed inside closing quotation marks. Periods and commas that are part of the person's speech are permitted inside the quotation marks regardless of whether the material is fiction.- At that time typesetting did use curved quotation marks.citation needed The ASCII character set, which has been used on a wide variety of computers since the 1960s, contains the straight versions only (U+0027 ' APOSTROPHE and U+0022 " QUOTATION MARK).
- Question marks in a quotation within a quotation can get tricky.
- 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).
- In Bulgarian, Icelandic, Estonian, Lithuanian, and Russian, single quotation marks are not used.clarification needed
- 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".
- These same systems often drew the backtick (the free standing character U+0060 ` GRAVE ACCENT) as an 'open quote' glyph (usually a mirror image so it still sloped in the direction of a grave accent).
- In both major styles, regardless of placement, only one end mark (?, !, or .) can end a sentence.
Introducing the quoted material: when to use a comma, colon, period, or no punctuation at all.
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.Other rules for quotation marks
Scare quotes generally appear as quotation marks around a single word or sometimes a phrase. Spanish uses angled quotation marks (comillas latinas or angulares), with no space between the quotation mark and the quoted material. In case of quoted material inside a quotation, rules and most noted style manuals prescribe the use of different kinds of quotation marks. North American printing usually puts full stops and commas (but not colons, semicolons, exclamation or question marks) inside the closing quotation mark, whether it is part of the original quoted material or not. Nevertheless, while other languages do not insert spaces between the quotation marks and the word(s) quoted, the French usage does insert them, even if they are narrow spaces.Run-in quotations
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. When the material being quoted contains a quotation within a quotation (i.e., something in single quotation marks), use double quotation marks. 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. When a run-in quotation contains quotation marks within the quoted material itself, use single quotation marks in their place. Most large newspapers have kept these low-high quotation marks, „ and ”; otherwise, the alternative form with single or double English-style quotes is now often the only form seen in printed matter.- In France, by the end of the nineteenth century, the marks were modified to an angular shape.
- The Far East angle bracket quotation marks, 《...》, are also a development of the in-line angular quotation marks.citation needed
- French uses angle quotation marks (guillemets, or duck-foot quotes), adding a 'quarter-em space'a within the quotes.
- All other forms of quotation marks, such as angled, lowered, inverted, were not provided by British or American typewriters.
- Thus, to represent curly quotes in XML and SGML, it is safest to use the decimal numeric character references.
- An exception may be made when writing fiction, where the first comma may be placed before the first closing quote.
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