Most people easily grasp the main use of quotation marks: setting off direct quotes in writing. This does get a little tricky when working with other punctuation marks, however. For instance, periods and commas go inside the end quotation mark here in the U.S., but in England the period and comma go outside the end quotation mark. (Lori said, "I am going to the mall."--U.S. vs. Lori said, "I am going to the mall".--England). Most of us are used to writing quotes, so this understanding comes naturally to us. I'm not going to go into more detail right now about how to punctuate direct quotes. For a more detailed description, see Purdue OWL Quotation Marks. Instead, I'm going to talk about other, less-known uses for quotes.
Sometimes quotes are used to indicate a level of sarcasm or denoting that what is said is not quite true. For instance, if I were to describe dingy socks, I might call them "white": meaning, they used to be or should be white, but are white no longer. You might be familiar with people using "air quotes." Many times these are used for this same purpose: Don't you just "love" this rain we've been having every day for a month?? Quotations around individual words like this are approximately the equivalent of a speaker rolling her eyes while saying the word. The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) defines this usage this way: "Quotation marks may additionally be used to indicate words used ironically or with some reservation."
Recently I've noticed an increase in the use of quotation marks to set off a word or to give it emphasis. This can cause some hilarious situations. Have you ever seen signs that say, "Sale" today! or, Everything is on "sale." What this means to me is that everything is not really on sale. We're having a fake sale. Come see all the regular prices in our store! Or what about a sign for tomatoes: Fresh "vine-ripe" tomatoes for "sale"! (haha). Are they vine-ripe? or is this a lie to get us to buy these tomatoes on "sale" (for the regular price)? Listen up: quotations are not meant to be used to set apart words as important. To do that, use italics, or bold type, or underlining. These methods work much better at getting your point across. So, go buy those VINE-RIPE tomatoes on sale! and save yourself some money.
2 comments:
What about people quoting other people? Such as, "I went up to her and told her I was angry. She was all like, 'no way man, what I said was "go away,"' but I was like 'nuh-uh.'"
Is any of that right? That's my understanding of quotation marks within quotation marks.
Yes, Scott. You have it right. When there are multiple quotations embedded in each other you will alternate between single quotes and double quotes. In the US, at least, the primary (outside) quotes will be double quotes. I love your quote example, by the way. :)
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