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. 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. 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.
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.

To show dialogue or transcribe speech

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 spinorhino casino 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).
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 a quoted question ends in midsentence, the question mark replaces a comma. The placement of question marks with quotation marks follows logic. To add quotation mark to a word list please sign up or log in.
(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.

App Functionality

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».

More meanings of quotation mark

The quotation mark is typically used to denote inches, and the apostrophe denotes feet. Scare quotes in writing are the origin of the air quotes gesture in in-person speech. Scare quotes are used to show that the writer doubts the validity of a word. They indicate a quotation or direct speech and set words and passages apart from the rest of the text.

Usenet and email

This usage can be confused with ironic or altered-usage quotation, sometimes with unintended humor. Quotation marks can also set off a nickname embedded in an actual name, or a false or ironic title embedded in an actual title; for example, Nat «King» Cole, Frank «Chairman of the Board» Sinatra, or Simone Rizzo «Sam the Plumber» DeCavalcante. Quotation marks, rather than italics, are generally used for the titles of shorter works. A publisher’s or author’s style may take precedence over regional general preferences. When this practice was abandoned, the empty margin remained, leaving the modern form of indented block quotation.

  • 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).
  • In these cases, questions arise about the form (and names) of the quotation marks to be used.
  • ” is part of the quotation.
  • Using this character as the opening quote gave a typographic approximation of curved single quotes.
  • Generally, this smart quote feature is enabled by default, and it can be turned off in an «options» or «preferences» dialog.
  • Both quotation marks and italics are used for the titles of works, but certain types of works use only quotes, and others use only italics.
  • The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the same glyph.
  • Find the quotation you need on our sister site funnyQuotation.com.
  • If you want to discuss a word, phrase, or letter in writing without using its intended meaning, set it apart with quotation marks.
  • In Western Europe the custom became to use the quotation mark pairs with the convexity of each mark aimed outward.
  • If a quoted question ends in midsentence, the question mark replaces a comma.

The American style is used by most newspapers, publishing houses, and style guides in the United States and, to a lesser extent, Canada as well. Some American style guides specific to certain specialties also prefer the British style. Hart’s Rules and the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors call the British style «new» quoting. Both systems have the same rules regarding question marks, exclamation points, colons, and semicolons.

Do question marks and exclamation marks go inside quotes?

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.
But there are still applications which still use the older character sets, or output data using them, and thus problems still occur. This style is particularly common in Bulgarian, French, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese. A quotation dash is also used, and is predominant in belletristic literature.
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.