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Learn about Quotation Marks

Quotation marks, also called quotes or inverted commas, are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the same character.

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 USA, but a publisher's or even an author's style may take precedence. 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.

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:

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.”

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