1. DIRECT QUOTATIONS
Use double quotation marks (” “) to enclose a direct quotation:
After telling an audience that young people today “think work is a four-letter word,” a mother apologized to her daughter.
“No good deed,” wrote Clare Booth Luce, “will go unpunished.”
Keep in mind that direct quotations repeat a speaker’s exact words. In contrast, indirect quotations are summaries or paraphrases of someone else’s words. Do not use quotation marks around indirect quotations:
An example is Paul said, “I’m satisfied.”
In American English, periods and commas always go inside the quotation marks. In British English, periods and commas go inside the quotation marks only for a complete quoted sentence; otherwise, they go outside.
2. TITLES
Softly, almost tenderly, Legree recited the lyrics to the song “She Made Toothpicks out of the Timber of My Heart.”
The first draft of my favourite essay, “Once More to the Lake,” was a letter that the author wrote to his brother a week after their mother’s death.
Do NOT put quotation marks around the titles of books, newspapers, or magazines; instead, italicize or underline those titles.
3. QUOTATIONS WITHIN QUOTATIONS
In American English, a pair of single quotation marks (‘ ‘) is used to enclose a title, direct quotation, or piece of dialogue that appears within another quotation. But the British customarily reverse this order: first using single quotation marks–or ‘inverted commas’–and then turning to double quotation marks to enclose quotations within quotations
American: Josie once said, “I have never read much poetry, but I love the sonnet ‘Be Bop a Lula.'”
British: Josie once said, ‘I have never read much poetry, but I love the sonnet “Be Bop a Lula.”‘
Notice that two separate quotation marks appear at the end of the sentence: a single mark to close the title and a double mark to close the direct quotation (American),
but a double mark to close the title and a single mark to close the direct quotation (British).
4. COMMAS AND QUOTATIONS
When a comma or a period appears at the end of a quotation, put it inside the quotation mark:
“Gluttony is an emotional disease,” Peter DeVries once wrote, “a sign that something is eating us.”
5. OTHER MARKS OF PUNCTUATION WITH QUOTATION MARKS
When a semicolon or a colon appears at the end of a quotation, put it outside the quotation mark:
John Wayne never said, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do”; however, he did say, “A man ought to do what’s right.”
When a question mark or an exclamation point appears at the end of a quotation, put it inside the quotation mark if it belongs to the quotation:
Gus sang, “How Can I Miss You If You Don’t Go Away?”
But if the question mark or exclamation point does not belong to the quotation itself, put it outside the quotation mark:
Did Merdine really sing, “His Heart Was Pure”?
If omitting material from the original sentence or sentences leaves a quotation that appears to be a sentence or a series of sentences, you must use ellipsis points, or three spaced periods, to indicate that your quotation does not completely reproduce the original:
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