In Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, the curved quotation marks, „…“, are used as a secondary level or in handwriting, while the angular marks, «…», are used as the primary level on printed text.citation needed The curved quotation marks („66–99“) usage, “…”, was exported to some non-Latin scripts, notably where there was some English influence, for instance spinorhino casino in Native American scripts and Indic scripts. After the publication of Filelfo’s edition, the quotation marks for literal quotations prevailed. The single quotation mark is traced to Ancient Greek practice, adopted and adapted by monastic copyists. The method for producing smart quotes may be based solely on the character preceding the mark. To make typographic quotation marks easier to enter, publishing software often automatically converts typewriter quotation marks (and apostrophes) to typographic form during text entry (with or without the user being aware of it).

Typographic forms

Here, we explain the must-know guidelines for proper quotation mark usage, including examples for each. Thus, to represent curly quotes in XML and SGML, it is safest to use the decimal numeric character references. „Smart quotes“ features wrongly convert initial apostrophes (as in ‚tis, ‚em, ‚til, and ’89) into opening single quotes. Performance by these „smart quotes“ features was far from perfect overall (variance potential by e.g. subject matter, formatting/style convention, user typing habits). Before Unicode was widely accepted and supported, this meant representing the curved quotes in whatever 8-bit encoding the software and underlying operating system was using. In Finnish, the beginning of a reporting clause is marked only by the punctuation already existing in the sentence, or (if there was none) by adding a comma.
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).

• Thus, to represent curly quotes in XML and SGML, it is safest to use the decimal numeric character references.
• In France, by the end of the nineteenth century, the marks were modified to an angular shape.
• An exception may be made when writing fiction, where the first comma may be placed before the first closing quote.
• All other forms of quotation marks, such as angled, lowered, inverted, were not provided by British or American typewriters.
• A colon should be used when the text introducing the quoted material could stand as a sentence on its own.
• The Far East angle bracket quotation marks, 《…》, are also a development of the in-line angular quotation marks.citation needed

“The best investments today”, according to Smith, “are commodities and emerging-market stocks”. “The best investments today,” according to Smith, “are commodities and emerging-market stocks.” Find the quotation you need on our sister site funnyQuotation.com. (2) Quotation marks to signify so-called or alleged (4) To show that a word refers to the word itself not the word’s meaning.

quotation mark American Dictionary

• Question marks in a quotation within a quotation can get tricky.
• 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).
• These same systems often drew the backtick (the free standing character U+0060 ` GRAVE ACCENT) as an ‚open quote‘ glyph (usually a mirror image so it still sloped in the direction of a grave accent).
• To make typographic quotation marks easier to enter, publishing software often automatically converts typewriter quotation marks (and apostrophes) to typographic form during text entry (with or without the user being aware of it).
• In Bulgarian, Icelandic, Estonian, Lithuanian, and Russian, single quotation marks are not used.clarification needed

In Finnish and Swedish, right quotes, called citation marks, ”…”, are used to mark both the beginning and the end of a quote. In Central Europe, the practice was to use the quotation mark pairs with the convexity aimed inward. In Western Europe the custom became to use the quotation mark pairs with the convexity of each mark aimed outward. (For additional characters used in other languages, see Quotation mark § Summary table.) Prime and double prime are not present in most code pages, including ASCII and Latin-1, but are present in Unicode, as characters U+2032 ′ PRIME and U+2033 ″ DOUBLE PRIME.

Nicknames and false titles

In American writing, quotation marks are normally the double kind (the primary style). If it is a space or another of a set of hard-coded characters or if the mark begins a line, the mark will be rendered as an opening quote; if not, it will be rendered as a closing quote or apostrophe. In Windows, AutoHotkey scripts can be used to assign simpler key combinations to opening and closing quotation marks. In some languages, if it is desired to include the same quotation marks used to delimit a string inside the string, the quotation marks are doubled. Double quotation marks, or pairs of single ones, also represent the ditto mark. Straight quotation marks (or italicised straight quotation marks) are often used to approximate the prime and double prime, e.g. when signifying feet and inches or arcminutes and arcseconds.
The American style is used by most newspapers, publishing houses, and style guides in the United States and, to a lesser extent, Canada as well. Some American style guides specific to certain specialties also prefer the British style. Hart’s Rules and the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors call the British style „new“ quoting. Both systems have the same rules regarding question marks, exclamation points, colons, and semicolons.
In Windows, if it is necessary to follow a space with a closing quotation mark when Smart Quotes is in effect, it is usually sufficient to input the character using the Alt code shown above rather than typing “ or ‚. Straight quotation marks are also retronymically called dumb quotes („…“). There is generally no space between an opening quotation mark and the following word, or a closing quotation mark and the preceding word. In journals and newspapers, quotation mark double/single use often depends on the individual publication’s house style. British usage does vary, with some authoritative sources such as The Economist and The Times recommending the same usage as in the US, whereas other authoritative sources, such as The King’s English, Fowler’s, and New Hart’s Rules, recommend single quotation marks. For example, the journal Language of the Linguistic Society of America requires that the closing quotation mark precede the period or comma unless that period or comma is „a necessary part of the quoted matter“.
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.
In France, by the end of the nineteenth century, the marks were modified to an angular shape. In most other languages, including English, the marginal marks dropped out of use in the last years of the eighteenth century. Quotation marks have a variety of forms in different languages and in different media.

In English

Use quotation marks to indicate a direct quote or passage copied verbatim from another source. Use quotation marks to draw attention to words or language in your writing. In Windows file and folder names, the straight double quotation mark is prohibited, as it is a reserved character. Thus, in at least some cases, transferring content containing curved quotes (or any other non-ASCII characters) from a word processor to another application or platform has been less troublesome, provided all steps in the process (including the clipboard if applicable) are Unicode-aware. (An example of this error appears in the advertisements for the television show ‚Til Death.) The two very different functions of this character can cause confusion, particularly in British styles,g in which single quotes are the standard primary.
But there are still applications which still use the older character sets, or output data using them, and thus problems still occur. This style is particularly common in Bulgarian, French, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese. A quotation dash is also used, and is predominant in belletristic literature.

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.
In Australia, double quotes are preferred for indicating speech, except in the government and corporate sectors, where the preference is for single quotes. The typographic closing double quotation mark and the neutral double quotation mark are similar to – and sometimes stand in for – the ditto mark and the double prime symbol. Opening and closing quotation marks may be identical in form (called neutral, vertical, straight, typewriter, or „dumb“ quotation marks), or may be distinctly left-handed and right-handed (typographic or, colloquially, curly quotation marks); see Quotation mark § Summary table for details. Although the word is the same, “Camelot” the song takes quotation marks because it’s part of a larger work—namely, a full-length show called Camelot. Periods and commas ALWAYS go inside quotation marks.

Poland, adopted a variant with the convexity of the closing mark aimed rightward like the opening one, „…”. Some neighboring regions adopted the German curved marks tradition with lower–upper alignment, while some, e.g. Some authors claim that the reason for this was a practical one, in order to get a character that was clearly distinguishable from apostrophes, commas, and parentheses.