Quotation Mark
In English writing, quotation marks or inverted commas (informally referred to as quotes or speech marks) are punctuation marks surrounding a quotation, direct speech, or a literal title or name. Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning of a word or phrase than the one typically associated with it and are often used to express irony. Quotation marks are sometimes used to provide emphasis, although this is usually considered incorrect.
Quotation marks are written as a pair of opening and closing marks in either of two styles: single (‘…’) or double (“…”). 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 glyphs for details. Typographic quotation marks are usually used in manuscript and typeset text. Because typewriter and computer keyboards lack keys to directly enter typographic quotation marks, much typed writing has neutral quotation marks. The "smart quotes" feature in some computer software can convert neutral quotation marks to typographic ones, but sometimes imperfectly.
The closing single quotation mark is identical or similar in form to the apostrophe and similar to the prime symbol. However, these three characters have quite different purposes. The double quotation mark is similar to, and often used to represent, the ditto mark and the double prime symbol.
Read more about Quotation Mark: History, Typing Quotation Marks On A Computer Keyboard
Famous quotes related to quotation mark:
“In the theater, while you recognized that you were looking at a house, it was a house in quotation marks. On screen, the quotation marks tend to be blotted out by the camera.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“With wonderful art he grinds into paint for his picture all his moods and experiences, so that all his forces may be brought to the encounter. Apparently writing without a particular design or responsibility, setting down his soliloquies from time to time, taking advantage of all his humors, when at length the hour comes to declare himself, he puts down in plain English, without quotation marks, what he, Thomas Carlyle, is ready to defend in the face of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is an old error of man to forget to put quotation marks where he borrows from a woman’s brain!”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)