Quotation marks

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Quotation marks, or (especially in British English) inverted commas, also called, less formally, speech marks or quotes (“...” or ‘...’ or «...» or „...‟, etc.) are punctuation marks organized in pairs, set at the beginning and the end of a quotation and, likewise, at the beginning and the end of any passage with a special sense, a special use or a special form. For instance:

Martin Luther King said: “I have a dream”.

Space exploration was part of President Kennedy’s “New Frontier” program.

In Arabic, As salamu alaykum is a common greeting that means “Peace be upon you”.

Layout[edit]

Quotation length[edit]

The passage between quotation marks may vary considerably in size, in most languages this generally ranges from a single word to several lines.

Opening and closing marks[edit]

Normal shapes[edit]

The shapes of quotation marks generally differ according to the position:

• At the beginning, there is an “opening quotation mark”: “..., ‘..., «...
• At the end, there is a “closing quotation mark”: ...”, ...’, ...».

Smart quotes and dumb quotes[edit]

However, in nonprofessional typography, traditionally-differentiated shapes such as “...” and ‘...’ (called “curved” or “smart quotes”) are often replaced by uniform and straight shapes such as "..." and '...' (called “straight” or “dumb quotes”). This can be due to the keys on typewriters and computers or the configuration of publishing software. Some software can convert automatically dumb quotes into smart quotes as the writer types.

Embedding different levels of quotation marks[edit]

Sometimes, inner quotation marks may be inserted within outer quotation marks. In this case, the outer marks have the same form as other quotation marks of the text, whereas the inner marks have preferently a different form. For instance:

“Mark said ‘hello’ this morning.”

‘Mark said “hello” this morning.’

“Marc diguèt «bonjorn» aqueste matin.”

«Marc diguèt “bonjorn” aqueste matin.»

Shapes in different languages[edit]

Quotation marks may have differing shapes and layouts depending on the language:

• “...” and ‘...’ as in English and many other languages,
• «...» and “...” as in many Romance languages,
• « ... » (with inner nonbreaking spaces) and “...” as in French,
• »...« as in Danish,
• »...« and „...‟ and ,...‘ as in German,
• »...» and ”...” as in Swedish and Finnish.

etc.

The following table^[1] summerizes various uses in various languages.

Technical use[edit]

Bibliographic referencing[edit]

In several bibliographic referencing norms, quotation marks indicate the title of an article or a text inserted in a larger document whose title is in italics (such as a book, a journal, a review or a newspaper).

In 1898, Émile Zola wrote his famous article “J’accuse...!” in the newspaper L’Aurore.

Linguistics[edit]

In linguistics, quotation marks indicate a sense, whereas italics indicate a shape:

In Swahili, farasi means “horse”.

Notes[edit]