Term of Art Goes in Single Quote or Double Quote
We are currently experiencing playback problems on Safari. If you would like to listen to the audio, please use Google Chrome or Firefox.
Hide player
Today's topic is single quotation marks versus double quotation marks.
How to Employ Double Quotation Marks
Most people think of double quotation marks equally being for quotations, which they are, but they also take other legitimate uses. For example, double quotation marks are often used around the title of a curt work such as a magazine article or an episode of a Goggle box show.
The "Darmok" episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is one of my favorites.
The rules for longer works, such as books, are tricky. The Associated Press uses quotation marks, but the Chicago Manual of Way and the MLA Handbook recommend italics.
Here are some of the more than common situations where people employ double quotation marks:
Purchase Now
As an Amazon Associate and a Bookshop.org Chapter, QDT earns from qualifying purchases.
- Employ double quotation marks for scare quotes
- Employ double quotation marks for words used as examples
Permit'south talk more about these examples below.
Employ Double Quotation Marks for Scare Quotes
People also sometimes use double quotation marks to indicate that a give-and-take is special in some way. I bet you've all seen quotation marks used as something called scare quotes, which are quotation marks put around a word to testify that the author doesn't buy into the meaning. For instance, I could write the sentence:
Women achieved "equality" when they were granted the right to vote in 1920.
That would signal that although women getting the right to vote was heralded equally equality at the time, I don't retrieve it was enough of a gain to merit the discussion "equality." More than ofttimes though, scare quotes (which are as well sometimes chosen sneer quotes) are used to impart a sense of irony or disdain. They're especially mutual in nasty political commentary, as inPoliticians "care" about their constituents.*
Employ Double Quotation Marks for Words Used as Examples
Double quotation marks tin can besides be used when yous are writing a sentence and you lot want to refer to a give-and-take rather than use its meaning. Since I talk about words a lot, this comes up in virtually every Grammer Girl episode. It's a fashion pick. Y'all can use italics or double quotation marks to highlight words, merely we use quotation marks on the Grammer Daughter site.
Be Careful of Unnecessary Quotation Marks
A common mistake, though, is to utilize quotation marks to simply highlight a word in a sentence. The pop "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks (rest in peace) did nothing merely mock signs that misuse quotation marks in this manner. For example, if yous are promoting your gluten-costless cookies, and yous put "gluten-free" in quotation marks, that actually ways they take gluten. Stick with underlining or italics, or bold to highlight words.
Why Use Unmarried Quotation Marks?
Here are some of the almost common reasons people use single quotation marks:
- Apply unmarried quotation marks for a quotation within a quotation
- Use single quotation marks in headlines
- Utilize unmarried quotation marks for words not being used for their pregnant
Let's talk more virtually each of these situations.
Employ Unmarried Quotation Marks for a Quotation Inside a Quotation
The most common reason to utilize unmarried quotation marks is to quote someone who is quoting someone else. The rules are different in British English, but in American English language, you lot enclose the primary speaker's comments in double quotation marks, and so you enclose the affair they are quoting in unmarried quotation marks. You nest them, with the double quotation marks on the outside and the single quotation marks on the inside.
For example, imagine y'all've interviewed Aardvark for a magazine article about his harrowing ordeal with an arrow, and he said, "Squiggly saved my life when he yelled, 'Watch out, Aardvark.' "
If you lot're ever in the extremely rare position of having to nest some other quotation inside a sentence like that, you would use double quotation marks again for the third nested quotation.
Y'all can find many articles that say British English uses single quotation marks effectually a direct quotation instead of double quotation marks, and although doing then is more common in British English language than in American English, information technology doesn't seem to be a hard-and-fast rule. I plant many British news sites that used double quotation marks just like an American site would, including The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Sun, and the BBC. It seems like using single quotation marks is more than of an option in British English language than a prevailing manner. And in U.k., they likewise sometimes call them inverted commas.
Employ a Thin Infinite Between a Unmarried Quotation Mark and a Double Quotation Mark
It can be hard to see a single quotation marking that'southward followed by a double quotation marking when they fall correct next to each other like they did in the last case, so typesetters sometimes insert something chosen a thin infinite betwixt the two quotation marks. A thin infinite is just what it sounds like: a infinite that'due south thinner than a regular space.
@GrammarGirl Very useful post. Re: Thin Infinite; its Unicode codepoint is U+2009. Example; with " ', and without "'. — Shervin Afshar (@shervinafshar) June 19, 2013
Use Single Quotation Marks in Headlines
Another place y'all'll see single quotation marks a lot is in headlines in newspapers and on websites because the Associated Press uses single quotation marks for quotations in headlines.
Use Single Quotation Marks to Highlight Words Non Beingness Used for Their Meaning
Finally, information technology's the convention in sure disciplines such as philosophy, theology, and linguistics to highlight words with special meaning by using unmarried quotation marks instead of double quotation marks.
'Quote' Versus 'Quotation'
Also, a frequent point of defoliation is the difference betwixt the words "quote" and "quotation." "Quote" is a verb that ways to repeat what someone else has said or written. For example, "Aardvark quoted Squiggly." "Quotation" is a substantive used to draw what you are quoting, as in "Squiggly'south quotation was inspiring."
It'southward common to hear people use the substantive "quote" as a shortened grade of "quotation," equally in "I filled my notebook with quotes from 'The Daily Show,'" only that is technically wrong. It should be, "I filled my notebook with quotations from 'The Daily Bear witness.'"
I hold the right way sounds a bit pretentious, and given that a lot of reference sources accept extra entries discussing how the misuse is widespread, you aren't going to sound illiterate if you use "quote" incorrectly, but it is still good to know the difference.
Summary
In American English, use double quotation marks to surround a quotation. In British English, you can use single or double quotation marks for that. If you lot write for a company or publication, check your style guide. If you lot need to put a quotation within your first quotation, utilise the reverse type of quotation marks to surround it. That's single quotation marks in American English.
Double quotation marks can likewise be used to show sarcasm or to identify words used as words instead of for their meaning. Single quotation marks are often used in headlines and in some disciplines to highlight words with special meanings.
*Unremarkably I would put this sentence in quotation marks, but I wanted to reserve them to make the betoken that the word is meant to exist facetious, so I chose to emphasize the sentence with italics.
Source: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/single-quotation-marks-versus-double-quotation-marks
0 Response to "Term of Art Goes in Single Quote or Double Quote"
Post a Comment