Quotation Marks Punctuation Rules and Examples

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 curved quotation marks (“66–99”) usage, “…”, was exported to some non-Latin scripts, notably where there was some English influence, for instance in Native American scripts and Indic scripts.
• 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.
• 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 in writing are the origin of the air quotes gesture in in-person speech.
• Since these continuation marks are obsolete in French, there is no support for automatic insertion of continuation guillemets in HTML or CSS, nor in word-processors.
• Below, we list the seven main uses for quotation marks.

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.

Curved quotes within and across applications

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.

• Never use single quotation marks in sentences like the previous three.
• Neutral (straight) quotation marks, ” and ‘, are used widely, especially in texts typed on computers and on websites.
• Quotation marks have a variety of forms in different languages and in different media.
• Single quotes are more usual in the United Kingdom, Ireland and South Africa, though double quotes are also common there, especially in journalistic worksclarification needed.
• Verdana, were not designed with the flexibility to use an English left quote as a German right quote.
• 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).

Quotes indicating verbal irony, or other special use, are sometimes called scare quotes. If such a passage is further quoted in another publication, then all of their forms have to be shifted up by one level. Sometimes quotations are nested in more levels than inner and outer quotation. They were used to quote direct speech as early as the late sixteenth century, and this practice became more common over time.

Scare quotes

The angle shape was introduced later to make them easier to distinguish from apostrophes, commas and parentheses in handwritten manuscripts submitted to publishers. French news sites such as Libération, Les Échos and Le Figaro do not add manual spacing, leaving it up to localization and the browser to space the guillemets properly. This style of quoting is also used in Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Georgian, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovene and in Ukrainian. Verdana, were not designed with the flexibility to use an English left quote as a German right quote. It is also similar to—and often used to represent—the double prime symbol. Styles elsewhere vary widely and have different rationales for placing it inside or outside, often a matter of house style.
Primary quotations are orthographically distinguished from secondary quotations that may be nested within a primary quotation. An exception may be made when writing fiction, where the first comma may be placed before the first closing quote. These two styles are most commonly referred to as “American” and “British”, or sometimes “typesetters’ quotation” and “logical quotation”.
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.
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).

Writing about letters and words

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.

To discuss words

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.
When the quoted material flows directly from your introductory text, no punctuation should be used before the quotation. Short quotations can generally be run in to the main text using quotation marks. Unless they are part of the original quotation, all marks other than commas or periods are placed outside the quotation marks. Commas and periods that are part of the overall sentence go inside the quotation marks, even though they aren’t part of the original quotation. Though not necessarily logical, the American rules for multiple punctuation with quotation marks are firmly established. But make sure to place closing quotation marks only at the end of the entire passage, not at the end of each paragraph.

What is the function of quotation marks?

(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.) A convention is the use of square brackets to indicate content between the quotation marks that has been modified from, or was not present in, the original material. In many cases, quotations that span multiple paragraphs are set as block quotations, and thus do not require quotation marks.

In Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, the curved quotation marks, „…“, are used as a secondary level or in handwriting, while the angular marks, «…», are used as the primary level on printed text.citation needed The curved quotation marks (“66–99”) usage, “…”, was exported to some non-Latin scripts, notably where there was some English influence, for instance in Native American scripts and Indic scripts. After the publication of Filelfo’s edition, the quotation marks for literal quotations prevailed. The single quotation mark is traced to Ancient Greek practice, adopted and adapted by monastic copyists. The spinorhino casino method for producing smart quotes may be based solely on the character preceding the mark. 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).
Quotation marks can be used when referring to a specific word or letter. The unpunctuated lead-in is most commonly used with run-in quotations, but it is also appropriate for introducing block quotations that flow directly from the introductory text. A very short quotation may also be introduced without punctuation. A period can be used to introduce a block quotation when the introductory text stands on its own as a complete sentence. It is also the mark most commonly used to introduce a block quotation. Longer quotations should be set off from the main text, and are referred to as block quotations.