Quotation marks in English Wikipedia

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 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).
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.
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.

• When the quoted material flows directly from your introductory text, no punctuation should be used before the quotation.
• Other usages of quotation marks (“quote„ for double, ‹quote› for single) are obsolete in Portuguese.citation needed.
• After the publication of Filelfo’s edition, the quotation marks for literal quotations prevailed.
• 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.
• An indirect quote lets you capture or summarize what someone said or wrote without using their exact words.
• They are also sometimes used to emphasise a word or phrase, although this is usually considered incorrect.

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.

Do question marks and exclamation marks go inside quotes?

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.
A closing quotation mark, », is added to the beginning of each new paragraph within a quotation. (For other languages employing dashes, see section Quotation dash below.) The dashes may be used entirely without quotation marks as well. The French news site L’Humanité uses straight quotation marks along with angle ones. The use of English quotation marks is increasing in French and usually follows English rules, for instance in situations when the keyboard or the software context doesn’t allow the use of guillemets. Neutral (straight) quotation marks, ” and ‘, are used widely, especially in texts typed on computers and on websites.

To signal the titles of creative works

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”.

• Styles elsewhere vary widely and have different rationales for placing it inside or outside, often a matter of house style.
• In Central Europe, the practice was to use the quotation mark pairs with the convexity aimed inward.
• Guillemet marks pointing inwards are used for highlights and in case a quotation occurs inside a quotation.
• It is also similar to the use of quotation marks in many other languages (including Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan, Dutch and German).
• 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.

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.
Direct quotes use the exact words from a source and require quotation marks. The curved quotation marks, as well as the straight single quotation mark, are permitted. Other usages of quotation marks (“quote„ for double, ‹quote› for single) are obsolete in Portuguese.citation needed.

Usenet and email

The double quotation mark is identical to the ditto mark in English-language usage. The Far East angle bracket quotation marks, 《…》, are also a development of the in-line angular quotation marks.citation needed On the other hand, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic and Ethiopic adopted the French “angular” quotation marks, «…». This was considered aesthetically unpleasing, while the in-line quotation marks helped to maintain the typographical color, since the quotation marks had the same height and were aligned with the lower case letters. In his edition of the works of Aristotle, which appeared in 1483 or 1484, the Milanese Renaissance humanist Francesco Filelfo marked literal and appropriate quotes with oblique double dashes on the left margin of each line. The double quotation mark derives from a marginal notation used in fifteenth-century manuscript annotations to indicate a passage of particular importance (not necessarily a quotation); the notation was placed in the outside margin of the page and was repeated alongside each line of the passage.

Other rules for quotation marks

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.
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). The Unicode standard introduced a separate character U+2015 ― HORIZONTAL BAR to be used as a quotation dash. In addition to being standard for second level quotes, guillemet quotes are sometimes used as first level quotes in headings and titles, but almost never for ordinary text in paragraphs. Guillemet marks pointing inwards are used for highlights and in case a quotation occurs inside a quotation.

(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.

Signalling unusual usage

The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the same glyph. Quotation marksA are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to identify direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. In the TeX typesetting program, left double quotes are produced by typing two back-ticks (“) and right double quotes by typing two apostrophes (”).
Since curved quotes are the typographically correct ones,citation needed word processors have traditionally offered curved quotes to users (at minimum as available characters). Most computer keyboards do not have specific keys for curved quotation marks or angled quotation marks. Using this spinorhino casino character as the opening quote gave a typographic approximation of curved single quotes. Instead, to limit the number of characters (and keys) required, straight quotation marks were invented as a compromise. When typewriter keyboards were designed, curved quotation marks were not implemented. Different typefaces, character encodings and computer languages use various encodings and glyphs for quotation marks.