A Word, Please: Not all quotes are created equal

I don’t remember when I first learned about single quotation marks, but I have a vague memory of assuming they were as useful as quotation marks, or close to it. Sometimes you quote someone. Sometimes you quote someone quoting someone else. Seemed sensible to me.

Real-world single quotation marks are very different from what I thought. Sure, sometimes you need to quote someone quoting someone. And sometimes you need to quote someone mentioning a book or movie title. But these legitimate uses are much rarer than I’d have guessed. In my experience, most single quotation marks are used in error. Here’s how to get them right.

Know the basics

This sentence shows single quote marks used correctly: Mike said, “I was talking to John who called Venice ‘an extraordinary vacation spot.’” You’re quoting Mike and putting that in regular quotation marks. And because Mike quotes John, John’s speech goes in single quotation marks. That’s the principle.

Know how to get fancy

A quotation of a quotation goes in single quotation marks. But if there’s a quotation nested inside that internal quotation, that gets double quotation marks. Amber said, “Chris told me Brad said, ‘Steve called him “my man.”’” Thankfully, we don’t have many occasions to nest quotes one into another like matryoshka dolls. When we do, that’s probably a sign we should reword our sentence. But in the rare cases when it comes up, it’s good to know the rule is simple. Just alternate single quotes then double quotes then single quotes and on and on.

Streamline headlines

Headlines, at least in news editing, use single quotation marks in place of doubles: New developments ‘troubling,’ mayor says. Think of this as a convention from the days when news was consumed mostly on paper and news outlets sought to save space with tight writing and punctuation.

Pick a style for titles

You’ve probably seen movie titles, book titles and the like in quotation marks sometimes and in italics other times. There’s no one right or wrong way to do this. It’s just different preferences of different publishing styles. You can use either method, but if you use quotation marks for titles know that these are plain-old, regular quotation marks, just as you’d use for quoted speech. “Star Wars.” Don’t use singles instead unless the title is within a quotation.

Don’t fall for “quotation marks lite”

Quotation marks, which are doubled, show direct speech. Therefore, a lot of people assume, single quotation marks must be a milder, noncommittal type of quotation mark perfect for putting in quotes things like sentence fragments and words being referred to as words, as in: Maria uses the term ‘synergy’ a lot. That’s logical. Unfortunately it’s just not true. Words being discussed take plain-old double quotation marks: Maria uses the term “synergy” a lot. The same is true for words or phrases used ironically or with doubt cast on them: He gets his information from “experts.” Even if that’s not a direct quotation, double quote marks are the way to go here, not singles.

Know where the other punctuation goes

Single quotation marks follow these rules, which are the same as those for regular quotation marks: A period or comma, in American English, always goes before the closing single quotation mark: Renee said, “The movie ‘Jaws,’ which I saw in the theater, still scares me today.” A colon or semicolon always follows a single quotation mark: Renee said, “The movie was ‘Jaws’; I saw it in the theater.” A question mark or exclamation point goes after the single quotation mark unless it’s part of the quote: Renee said, “We enjoyed ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ almost as much.”

— June Casagrande is the author of “The Joy of Syntax: A Simple Guide to All the Grammar You Know You Should Know. She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.