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  Home    Grammar    Punctuation    Quotation marks Contact  
American English Grammar
Quotation marks
Learning objectives
  • Learn the definition of quotation marks
  • Study usage of quotation marks
Definition of a quotation mark

  • Quotation marks look like this:

        ' ' or ‘ ’ or " " or “ ”

  • Quotation marks are:

    • used to set off speech, a quotation, or a phrase

    • also called quotes or inverted commas

  • An opening quotation mark should appear at the beginning of each paragraph of the quoted text and a closing quotation mark at the end

  • The general convention is for sentence punctuation to be included inside the quotation marks, even if the punctuation is not part of the quoted sentence
Usage of quotation marks

  • Standard usage:

    • “Good morning, Dave,” said HAL.

  • For speech within speech:

    • “HAL said, "Good morning, Dave",” said Frank.

  • Note: do not use quotation marks for paraphrased speech

    • Correct: HAL said that everything was going extremely well.

    • Incorrect: HAL said that “Everything was going extremely well.”

  • Titles of artistic works - quotation marks, rather than italics, are generally used for the titles of shorter works:

    • short fiction, poetry, etc.: Arthur C. Clarke’s’s “The Sentinel”

    • book chapters: The first chapter of 3001: The Final Odyssey is “Comet Cowboy”

    • articles in books, magazines, journals, etc.: “Extra-Terrestrial Relays”, Wireless World, October 1945

    • album tracks, singles, etc.: Globe’s “Fade into” 
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