To Set Off a Quote Inside a Quote, What Punctuation Mark Should You Use?

• Nosotros apply quotation marks with direct quotes, with titles of sure works, to imply alternate meanings, and to write words as words.
• Block quotations are not gear up off with quotation marks.
• The quoted text is capitalized if yous're quoting a complete sentence and not capitalized if you lot're quoting a fragment.

Do commas and periods go within or exterior quotation marks?

• Commas and periods always become inside the quotation marks in American English; dashes, colons, and semicolons nearly always become outside the quotation marks; question marks and exclamation marks sometimes get inside, sometimes stay exterior.

When to apply quotation marks

Quotation marks are for when you want to employ someone else'south words in your writing. Allow's say you want to write about something you heard your friend say. Yous could practice it like this:

Y'all can write about the same affair without using the quotation marks, with a couple of changes:

The first judgement contains a straight quote, a quote in which yous report the exact words John used. The second sentence contains an indirect quote, which is a paraphrased version of what John said. Quotation marks are used only with direct quotes.

This rule isn't simply for speech. If you're quoting a written source, you should still put the quote between quotation marks unless you program to paraphrase it.

Run-in and cake quotations

Direct quotations come in 2 dissimilar forms: run-in and block. Run-in quotations are shorter and they are formatted the same as the surrounding text. Block quotes are long quotes that are separated from the surrounding text. Usually, they appear as a divide paragraph (or series of paragraphs) with a dissimilar font, a change in the line spacing, or a wider margin. In any case, block quotes don't demand quotation marks to fix them off from the remaining text, even though they are direct quotes.

And in case you're wondering simply how long a quote needs to get for information technology to be a cake quote, information technology varies from one style guide to some other. If you take to follow a style guide, you lot should check it for best practices. If you don't take to follow a style guide, set your own rule (like five lines of text makes a cake quotation), and stick to information technology.

Quotation marker rules

The beginning rule of using quotations is that in one case they're opened, they have to be closed. The person reading your piece of work needs to know where the quote starts and where it ends. But that's an piece of cake one. What about some trickier quotation mark rules?

Quotations and capitalization

Sometimes, the text inside quotation marks is capitalized, other times it isn't. Capitalization of the quoted cloth depends on the fabric itself—if y'all're quoting a complete sentence, you should start the quote with a capital letter of the alphabet, even if the quote is placed in the middle of a sentence:

If yous're quoting a phrase or a part of a sentence, don't first the quote with a majuscule alphabetic character:

If yous're splitting a quote in half to interject a parenthetical, you should non capitalize the second part of the quote:

Quotation marks and other punctuation marks

Does punctuation become inside or outside quotation marks? This question more often than not refers to the sentence-catastrophe punctuation marks—punctuation marks that innovate a quote are never placed within quotation marks.

Sentence-ending punctuation is a whole different story. In the United States, the rule of pollex is that commas and periods always go inside the quotation marks, and colons and semicolons (dashes also) go outside:

"At that place was a storm last night," Paul said.

Peter, nonetheless, didn't believe him. "I'chiliad not certain that's exactly what happened."

Peter was aware of what he called "Paul's weakness triangle": he was half deaf, slept like a log, and was prone to lying.

Paul saw an statement coming, so he muttered simply "But I saw it"; this was going to be a long nighttime and he didn't desire to first information technology with a fight.

Question marks and exclamation points have their own rules.

If they apply to the quoted material, they go within the quotation marks. If they apply to the whole judgement, they go outside information technology:

Sandy asked them, "Why practise you guys always fight?"

Did the dog bark every time he heard Sandy say "I'one thousand bringing dinner"?

Quotes within quotes

So now yous know how to deal with quotation marks and punctuation and capitalization, merely what if the quote y'all want to accept already contains quotation marks? This tin happen, too. Say you lot desire to write a directly quote in which someone is praising their favorite chapter from 1 of the Harry Potter books. Would y'all exercise information technology like this?

""The Dementor'due south Kiss" is my favorite chapter in the whole series," Tom said.

It doesn't work, does it? You might even manage to confuse your word processing plan. But if you practise information technology like this, everything will look much meliorate:

"'The Dementor's Kiss' is my favorite affiliate in the whole serial," Tom said.

See how that worked better? We use single quotation marks for quotes within quotes.

Other uses of quotation marks: titles of short works, words as words, scare quotes

Besides setting off other people'southward words, quotation marks have a couple of other uses. Depending on the manner guide you're using, you lot might apply quotation marks to emphasize titles of all types of compositions (AP Stylebook), or merely short compositions (most of the other style guides). Titles of books, albums, magazines, newspapers, and other standalone and bigger bodies of work are usually italicized. Poems, chapters, articles—smaller bodies of piece of work, or bodies of work which grade a larger body of work—are emphasized by using quotation marks.

You can also utilize quotation marks to signify words used as words. For example: "inhale" ways to take a breath. The quotation marks show that you're talking about the word itself, not the activity of inhaling. Withal, you'll ofttimes hear that information technology's ameliorate to italicize words used as words rather than put them in quotation marks—dissimilar mode guides might prescribe unlike rules.

Some writers put quotes around words they want to altitude themselves from. Quotation marks used this manner are commonly called scare quotes or shudder quotes. It's a style of implying that you're using a term in an unusual manner or that you don't necessarily approve of it:

Scare quotes are sort of similar air quotes, and if you know anything almost air quotes, you lot know that they should exist used in moderation. The same applies to scare quotes.

You might encounter quotation marks used instead of parentheses for translations. And so you can write translations like this:

She told him bonjour (good solar day) when they met.

But you tin also exercise it like this:

She told him bonjour, "good day," when they met.

Single quotation marks

We've already mentioned that single quotation marks can be used for quotes within quotes. But that's not all they can do—they can also be used instead of parentheses for translations, only in that case, they don't have to exist separated by commas:

She told him bonjour 'bye' when they met.

Highly specialized terms in certain fields can likewise be written inside single quotation marks:

Many scholars however argue almost Lacan's 'desire' and its implications.

You can also encounter single quotation marks instead of double quotation marks in headlines of newspaper articles. And of course, all of these rules apply to American English—single vs. double quotation marks is a whole different story in British English.

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Source: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/quotation-marks/

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