When inserted in the middle of a person’s actual name, a nickname should appear in quotation marks. As an alternative to parentheses, quotation marks can be used to enclose a translation. A colon should be used when the text introducing the quoted material could stand as a sentence on its own. The comma is the mark most frequently used to introduce quoted material. In general, short-form works like poems, songs, or short stories use quotation marks, while long-form works like books, films, or stage plays use italics.

Run-in quotations

During the Renaissance, quotations were distinguished by setting in a typeface contrasting with the main body text (often italic type vs roman). In the first centuries of typesetting, quotations were distinguished merely by indicating the speaker, and this can still be seen in some editions of the Christian Bible. (Despite the different code points, the curved and straight versions are sometimes considered multiple glyphs of the same character.) Question marks in a quotation within a quotation can get tricky. If a quotation functions as a subject or object in a sentence, it might not need a comma. Technically, the mark designating feet is a prime; the mark designating inches is a double prime.

Order of punctuation

Use commas to introduce or interrupt direct quotations of dialogue or text. Always capitalize the first word in a complete quotation, even midsentence. Periods and commas are placed outside the prime and double prime marks. Scare quotes (also known as sneer quotes) are used to cast doubt on a word or phrase, or to emphasize that the word or phrase is being used as a euphemism. Quotation marks are primarily used to indicate material that is being reproduced word for word, as well as some other important uses.

Pick up where you left off

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 spinorhino casino the rest of the text.

• They are also sometimes used to emphasise a word or phrase, although this is usually considered incorrect.
• Since curved quotes are the typographically correct ones,citation needed word processors have traditionally offered curved quotes to users (at minimum as available characters).
• Straight single and double quotation marks are used in most programming languages to delimit strings or literal characters, collectively known as string literals.
• When the quoted material flows directly from your introductory text, no punctuation should be used before the quotation.
• An indirect quote lets you capture or summarize what someone said or wrote without using their exact words.
• If you’re quoting two or more paragraphs, place opening quotation marks at the beginning of each new paragraph.
• After the publication of Filelfo's edition, the quotation marks for literal quotations prevailed.

Specific language features

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. 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.

• Quotes indicating verbal irony, or other special use, are sometimes called scare quotes.
• Indirect quotes restate or paraphrase those words or ideas and don’t require quotation marks.
• In Polish printed books and publications, this dictionary-recommended style for guillemets (also known as »German quotes«) is used almost exclusively.
• In American writing, quotation marks are normally the double kind (the primary style).
• The standard is to place the quoted nickname between the first name and the surname, although that’s not necessarily a rule.

If the question mark or exclamation mark is not part of the quote but part of a question or statement, place it outside the quotation marks. If the question mark or exclamation mark is part of the quote, place it inside the quotation marks. Place the period inside the quotation marks when a quotation comes at the end of a sentence. Place both parts of the quote within their own set of quotation marks. Because you want to attach the speaker to their dialogue, use a comma rather than a period to end the quote inside the quotation marks. In British English, punctuation marks are placed outside the quotation marks unless they are part of the original quotation.

Capitalize the first letter of the quoted sentence

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. The closing or right single quotation mark is identical in form to the apostrophe and similar to the prime symbol. Different varieties and styles of English have different conventions regarding whether terminal punctuation should be written inside or outside the quotation marks. A tendency to use single quotation marks in British writing is thought to have arisen after the mid-19th century invention of steam-powered presses and the consequent rise of London and New York as distinct, industrialized publishing centers whose publishing houses adhered to separate norms. If quotation marks are used inside another pair of quotation marks, then single quotation marks are used. In both major styles, regardless of placement, only one end mark (?, !, or .) can end a sentence. A few US professional societies whose professions frequently employ various non-word characters, such as chemistry and computer programming, use the British form in their style guides (see ACS Style Guide). They are sometimes gestured in oral speech using air quotes, or indicated in speech with a tone change or by replacement with supposedly or so-called. This is because indirect speech can be a paraphrase; it is not a direct quote, and in the course of any composition, it is important to document when one is using a quotation versus when one is just giving content, which may be paraphrased, and which could be open to interpretation. Single quotes are more usual in the United Kingdom, Ireland and South Africa, though double quotes are also common there, especially in journalistic worksclarification needed. This rule is optional with one-word quotations. Some websites do not allow typographic quotation marks or apostrophes in posts. This is a continuation of a typewriter tradition of using ticks for opening quotation marks; see Quotation mark § Typewriters and early computers. 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 an em dash, requires that there be no space. Americans tend to apply quotations when signifying doubt of veracity (sarcastically or seriously), to imply another meaning to a word or to imply a cynical take on a paraphrased quotation, without punctuation at all. According to the Jargon File from 1983, American hackers (members of a subculture of enthusiastic programmers) switched to what they later discovered to be the British quotation system because placing a period inside a quotation mark can change the meaning of data strings that are meant to be typed character-for-character. It is also similar to the use of quotation marks in many other languages (including Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan, Dutch and German). 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. 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. The Unicode mapping for PostScript Standard Encoding preserves the typographic approximation convention by mapping its equivalent of ASCII grave and single-quote to the Unicode curly quotation mark characters. At that time typesetting did use curved quotation marks.citation needed The ASCII character set, which has been used on a wide variety of computers since the 1960s, contains the straight versions only (U+0027 ' APOSTROPHE and U+0022 " QUOTATION MARK). In Brazil, angular quotation marks are rare, and curved quotation marks (“quote” and ‘quote’) are almost always used. Further, running dialogue does not use quotation marks beyond the first sentence, as changes in speaker are indicated by a dash, as opposed to the English use of closing and re-opening the quotation. In Bulgarian, Icelandic, Estonian, Lithuanian, and Russian, single quotation marks are not used.clarification needed 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.