Quotation mark
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Quotation marks, also called quotes, speech marks or inverted commas, are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, a phrase or a word. The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the same character.
They have a variety of forms in different languages and in different media:
- For languages other than English see Quotation mark, non-English usage
- For the various glyphs used in computer languages to define quotation marks see Quotation mark, glyphs
- For a description of how quotation marks are used within Wikipedia see Wikipedia, Manual of style: Quotation marks
For those fragments of a human expression placed inside quotation marks see Quotation
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[edit] Usage
[edit] Quotations and speech
Single or double quotation marks are used to denote either speech or a quotation. Neither style is an absolute rule, though double quotes are preferred in the United States and single quotes in the United Kingdom. A publisher’s or even an author’s style may take precedence over national general preferences. The important rule is that the style of opening and closing quotes must be matched.
- ‘Good morning, Dave,’ greeted HAL.
- “Good morning, Dave,” greeted HAL.
For speech within speech, the other is used as inner quotation marks.
- ‘HAL said, “Good morning, Dave,” ’ recalled Frank.
- “HAL said, ‘Good morning, Dave,’ ” recalled Frank.
Omitting quotes is generally not recommended.
Sometimes, quotations are nested in more levels than inner and outer quotation. Nesting levels up to five can be found in the Bible. In these cases, questions arise about the form (and names) of the quotation marks to be used. The most common way is to simply alternate between the two forms.
- “…‘…“…‘ … … ’…”…’…”
If such a passage is further quoted in another publication, then all of their forms have to be shifted over by one level.
In most cases, quotations that span multiple paragraphs should be block-quoted, and thus do not require quotation marks. Quotation marks are used for multiple-paragraph quotations in some cases, especially in narratives. The convention in English is to give the first and each subsequent paragraph opening quotes, using closing quotes only for the final paragraph of the quotation. The Spanish convention, though similar, uses closing quotes at the beginning of all subsequent paragraphs beyond the first.
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. Commas are also often used before and after the interruption, more often for quotations of speech than for quotations of text.
- “HAL,” noted Frank, “said that everything was going extremely well.”
It is generally considered incorrect to use quotation marks for paraphrased speech.
If HAL says: “All systems are functional.”
- Wrong: HAL said that “Everything was going extremely well.”
- Right: HAL said that everything was going extremely well.
- Right: HAL said, “All systems are functional.”
However, another convention when quoting text in the body of a paragraph or sentence, especially in philosophical essays, is to recognise double quotation marks as marking an exact quote, and single quotation marks as marking a paraphrased quote or a quote where pronouns or plurality have been changed in order to fit the sentence containing the quote.
[edit] Irony
Another important use of quotation marks is to indicate or call attention to ironic or apologetic words. Ironic quotes can also be called scare, sneer, shock, or distance quotes. Ironic quotes are sometimes gestured in oral speech using air quotes:
- My brother claimed he was too “busy” to help me.
Ironic quotes should be used with care. Without the intonational cues of speech, they could obscure the writer’s intended meaning. They could also be confused easily with quotations.
In a similar sense, quotes are also used to indicate that the writer realizes that the word is not being used in its (currently) accepted sense.
- In the fifteenth century, we “knew” that the Sun’s revolution divided day from night.
- Woody Allen joked, “I’m astounded by people who want to ‘know’ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.”
[edit] Emphasis (incorrect)
Quotes are sometimes used incorrectly for emphasis in lieu of underlining or italics, most commonly on signs or placards. This usage can be confused with ironic or altered-usage quotation, sometimes with unintended humor. For example - For sale: “fresh” fish, “fresh” oysters - could be construed to imply that fresh is not used with its everyday meaning, or indeed to indicate that the fish or oysters are anything but fresh. And again - Teller lines open until noon for your “convenience” - might mean that the “convenience” was for the bank employees, not the customers.[1] [2] [3] [4]
[edit] Use-mention distinction
Either quotes or italic type can emphasize that an instance of a word refers to the word itself rather than its associated concept.
- Cheese is derived from milk.
- “Cheese” is derived from a word in Old English.
- Cheese has calcium, protein, and phosphorus.
- Cheese has three e’s.
A three-way distinction is sometimes made between normal use of a word (no quotes), referencing the concept behind the word (single quotes), and the word itself (double quotes):
When discussing ‘use’, use “use”.
[edit] Titles of artistic works
Quotation marks, rather than italics, are generally used for the titles of shorter works. Whether these are single or double is again a matter of style:
- Short fiction, poetry, etc.: Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Sentinel”
- Book chapters: The first chapter of 3001: The Final Odyssey is “Comet Cowboy”
- Articles in books, magazines, journals, etc.: “Extra-Terrestrial Relays,” Wireless World, October 1945
- Album tracks, singles, etc.: David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”
[edit] Nicknames and false titles
Quotation marks are used to offset a nickname embedded in an actual name, or a false or ironic title embedded in an actual title; for example, Nat “King” Cole.
[edit] History
In early modern English, quote marks were used only to denote pithy comments. They first began to quote direct speech in 1714. By 1749, single quotes or “inverted commas”, were commonly used to denote direct speech. Unlike modern usage, a single open quote was placed at the beginning of each line of multi-line quotations.[5]
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[edit] Typographical considerations
[edit] Punctuation
The traditional convention in American English is for commas and periods to be included inside the quotation marks, even if they are not part of the quoted sentence, while the British style shows clearly whether or not the punctuation is part of the quoted phrase. The American rule is derived from typesetting while the British rule is grammatical (see below for more explanation). As with many such differences, the American rule follows an older British standard. The typesetter’s rule was standard in early 19th Century Britain; the grammatical rule was advocated by the extremely influential book The King’s English, by Fowler and Fowler. But UK style also illogically uses a comma inside quoted direct speech that precedes other material in the same sentence. This means that direct speech retains punctuation inside the quotation marks in BrE also, with a full stop changing into a comma if followed by explanatory text.
- “Carefree” means “free from care or anxiety.” (American style)
- “Carefree” means “free from care or anxiety”. (British style)
- “Hello, world,” I said. (both styles)
In British style, both single and double quotation marks are possible, but more modern style guides like the BBC’s tend to prefer the latter.
The American English rule is often not applied if the presence of the punctuation mark inside the quotation marks will lead to ambiguity, for example in describing commands to be typed into a computer:
- In the File name text field, type “HelloWorldApp.java”, including the quotation marks.[6]
Due to the influence of computer science (see BNF rules for describing formal languages), what is essentially (if unknowingly) the British standard has become more widely accepted in the U.S.:
- Also called “plain quotes”, they are teardrops.
- Dave asked, “Did HAL say ‘Good morning’, or did he not?”
Before the advent of mechanical type, the order of quotation marks with periods and commas was not given much consideration. The printing press required that the easily damaged smallest pieces of type for the comma and period be protected behind the more robust quotation marks.[1] The US style still adheres to this older tradition in formal writing but usually not in everyday use. Today, most areas of publication conform to one of the two standards above. However, in subjects such as chemistry and software documentation it is conventional to include only the precise quoted string within the quotes. This avoids ambiguity with regard to whether a punctuation mark belongs to the quote:
- Enter the URL as “www.wikipedia.org”, the name as “Wikipedia”, and click “OK”.
- The URL starts with “www.wikipedia.”. This is followed by “org” or “com”.
In both styles, question marks and exclamation marks are placed inside or outside quoted material on the basis of logic, but colons and semicolons are always placed outside[2]:
- Did he say, “Good morning, Dave”?
- No, he said, “Where are you, Dave?”
In the first two sentences above, only one punctuation mark is used at the end of each. Regardless of its placement, only one end mark (?, !, or .) can end a sentence in American English.
References: Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition; Hart’s Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford.
[edit] Spacing
In English, when a quotation follows other writing on a line of text, a space precedes the opening quotation mark unless the preceding symbol, such as a dash, requires that there be no space. 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. These exceptions are ignored by some Asian computer systems that systematically display quotation marks with the included spacing.
In Chinese, the spacing is irrelevant since all characters, including punctuation, are the same width.
There is generally no space between an opening quotation mark and the following word, or a closing quotation mark and the preceding word. When a double quotation mark or a single quotation mark immediately follows the other, proper spacing for legibility requires that a non-breaking space be inserted.
- So Dave actually said, “He said, ‘Good morning?’ ”
- Yes, he did say, “He said, ‘Good morning.’ ”
[edit] Non-language related usage
Straight quotes (or italic straight quotes) are often used to approximate the prime and double prime (e.g., when signifying inches and feet, or arcminutes and arcseconds). For instance, 5 feet and 6 inches is often written 5' 6", and 40 degrees, 20 minutes, and 50 seconds is written 40° 20' 50". When available, however, the prime should be used instead (e.g., 5′ 6″, and 40° 20′ 50″). Prime and double prime are not present in most character sets, including ASCII and Latin-1, but are present in Unicode, as characters U+2032 (dec. 8242) and U+2033 (dec. 8243), and as HTML entities ′ and ″.
Straight single and double quotes are used in most programming languages to delimit strings or literal characters. In some languages (e.g. Pascal) only one type is allowed, in some (e.g. C and its derivatives) both are used with different meanings and in others (e.g. Python) both are used interchangeably. In many languages, if it is desired to include the same quotes used to delimit a string inside the string, the quotes are doubled. For example to represent the string eat 'hot' dogs in Pascal one uses 'eat ''hot'' dogs'.
[edit] Glyphs
[edit] Notes
- ^ http://www1.umn.edu/urelate/style/italics.html
- ^ http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002796.html
- ^ http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/grammar/course/punctuation/3_8.htm
- ^ http://inkthinker.blogspot.com/2006/07/why-quotation-marks-should-not-be-used.html
- ^ Truss, Lynne. Eats, Shoots & Leaves, 2003. p. 151. ISBN 1-592-40087-6.
- ^ Part of a tutorial on Java programming on Microsoft Windows. Those parts of this page which would not be ambiguous follow the American rule
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Curling Quotes in HTML, SGML, and XML
- Beginners guide to quotation marks
- Quotation marks in the Unicode Common Locale Data Repository
- ASCII and Unicode quotation marks – detailed discussion of the ASCII `backquote' problem
- The Gallery of “Misused” Quotation Marks
- Commonly confused characters
- Smart Quotes
This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.
