In these cases, questions arise about the form (and names) of the quotation marks to be used. In Early Modern English, quotation marks were used to denote pithy comments. Because typewriter and computer keyboards lack keys to directly enter typographic quotation marks, much of typed writing has neutral quotation marks. Typographic quotation marks are usually used in manuscript and typeset text. Single quotation marks are valid only within a quotation, as per Rule 7, above. Put the title of a short work—one that is or could be part spinorhino casino of a larger undertaking—in quotation marks.

• Place both parts of the quote within their own set of quotation marks.
• Instead, to limit the number of characters (and keys) required, straight quotation marks were invented as a compromise.
• 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.
• 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.
• Use quotation marks to indicate a direct quote or passage copied verbatim from another source.
• As with a colon, place a semicolon outside quotation marks regardless of whether it’s before or after a quotation.

Specific language features

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).
In Finnish and Swedish, right quotes, called citation marks, ”…”, are used to mark both the beginning and the end of a quote. In Central Europe, the practice was to use the quotation mark pairs with the convexity aimed inward. In Western Europe the custom became to use the quotation mark pairs with the convexity of each mark aimed outward. (For additional characters used in other languages, see Quotation mark § Summary table.) Prime and double prime are not present in most code pages, including ASCII and Latin-1, but are present in Unicode, as characters U+2032 ′ PRIME and U+2033 ″ DOUBLE PRIME.

• Quotation marks are often used with technical terms, terms used in an unusual way, or other expressions that vary from standard usage.
• Before Unicode was widely accepted and supported, this meant representing the curved quotes in whatever 8-bit encoding the software and underlying operating system was using.
• (1) Quotation marks to identify previously spoken or written words
• When inserted in the middle of a person’s actual name, a nickname should appear in quotation marks.
• Several other Unicode characters with quotation mark semantics lack the character property.
• This style of quoting is also used in Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Georgian, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovene and in Ukrainian.

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).

Introducing the quoted material: when to use a comma, colon, period, or no punctuation at all.

The use of English quotation marks is increasing in Spanish;citation needed the El País style guide, which is widely followed in Spain, recommends them. They are the Latin tradition quotation marks, normally used by typographers, and are also the usual style in reference sources, as well as on some websites dedicated to the Portuguese language. In Portugal, angular quotation marks (ex. «quote») are traditionally used. The quotation marks end at the last word of spoken text (rather than extending to the end of the paragraph) when the final part is not spoken. In general, quotation marks are extended to encompass as much speech as possible, including not just unspoken text such as “he said” (as previously noted), but also as long as the conversion extends. Such insertion of continuation quotation marks was rigidly maintained, even at a word hyphenation break.

What Are Quotation Marks?

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.

Place punctuation marks inside quotation marks

(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.
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. Even more commonly, many people put a normal (breaking) space inside the quotation markscitation needed because the non-breaking space cannot be accessed easily from the keyboard, or because they are not aware of this typographical refinement. Alternatively, an en-dash followed by a (non-breaking) space can be used to denote the beginning of quoted speech, in which case the end of the quotation is not specifically denoted (see section Quotation dash below). Although not generally common in the Netherlands any more, double angle (guillemet) quotation marks are still sometimes used in Belgium. The King’s English in 1908 noted that the prevailing British practice was to use double marks for most purposes, and single ones for quotations within quotations.

How to Use Quotation Marks: Rules and Examples

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”.

Typographic forms

In some Baroque and Romantic-period books, they would be repeated at the beginning of every line of a long quotation. 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. They are also sometimes used to emphasise a word or phrase, although this is usually considered incorrect. Quotation marks are often used with technical terms, terms used in an unusual way, or other expressions that vary from standard usage. Is outside the quotation. ” is part of the quotation.
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.
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.
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.
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.