Quotation marks are

punctuation Punctuation marks are marks indicating how a piece of writing, written text should be read (silently or aloud) and, consequently, understood. The oldest known examples of punctuation marks were found in the Mesha Stele from the 9th century BC, c ...

marks used in pairs in various

writing system A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...

s to identify direct speech, a

quotation A quotation or quote is the repetition of a sentence, phrase, or passage from speech or text that someone has said or written. In oral speech, it is the representation of an utterance (i.e. of something that a speaker actually said) that is intro ...

, or a phrase. The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the same

glyph A glyph ( ) is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A ...

. Quotation marks have a variety of forms in different languages and in different media.

History

The single quotation mark is traced to Ancient Greek practice, adopted and adapted by monastic copyists.

Isidore of Seville Isidore of Seville (; 4 April 636) was a Spania, Hispano-Roman scholar, theologian and Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seville, archbishop of Seville. He is widely regarded, in the words of the 19th-century historian Charles Forbes René de Montal ...

, in his seventh century encyclopedia, , described their use of the Greek ''diplé'' (a chevron): The double quotation mark derives from a marginal notation used in fifteenth-century

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...

annotations to indicate a passage of particular importance (not necessarily a quotation); the notation was placed in the outside margin of the page and was repeated alongside each line of the passage. In his edition of the works of

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

, which appeared in 1483 or 1484, the Milanese Renaissance humanist

Francesco Filelfo Francesco Filelfo (; 25 July 1398 – 31 July 1481) was an Italian Renaissance humanism, Renaissance humanist and author of the philosophic dialogue ''On Exile''. Biography Filelfo was born at Tolentino, in the March of Ancona. He is believed t ...

marked literal and appropriate quotes with oblique double dashes on the left margin of each line. Until then, literal quotations had been highlighted or not at the author's discretion. were marked on the edge. After the publication of Filelfo's edition, the quotation marks for literal quotations prevailed. During the seventeenth century this treatment became specific to quoted material, and it grew common, especially in Britain, to print quotation marks (now in the modern opening and closing forms) at the beginning and end of the quotation as well as in the margin; the French usage is a remnant of this. In most other languages, including English, the marginal marks dropped out of use in the last years of the eighteenth century. The usage of a pair of marks, opening and closing, at the level of lower case letters was generalized. By the nineteenth century, the design and usage began to be specific to each region. In

Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's extent varies depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the Western half of the ancient Mediterranean ...

the custom became to use the quotation mark pairs with the convexity of each mark aimed ''outward.'' In

Britain Britain most often refers to: * Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales * The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...

those marks were elevated to the same height as the top of capital letters: . In

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

, by the end of the nineteenth century, the marks were modified to an angular shape called : . 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. Also, in other scripts, the angular quotation marks are distinguishable from other punctuation characters: the Greek breathing marks, the Armenian emphasis and apostrophe, the Arabic

comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical; others give it the appearance of a miniature fille ...

, the

decimal separator FIle:Decimal separators.svg, alt=Four types of separating decimals: a) 1,234.56. b) 1.234,56. c) 1'234,56. d) ١٬٢٣٤٫٥٦., Both a comma and a full stop (or period) are generally accepted decimal separators for international use. The apost ...

, the

thousands separator alt=Four types of separating decimals: a) 1,234.56. b) 1.234,56. c) 1'234,56. d) ١٬٢٣٤٫٥٦., Both a full_stop.html" ;"title="comma and a full stop">comma and a full stop (or period) are generally accepted decimal separators for interna ...

, etc. Other authors claim that the reason for this was an aesthetic one: the elevated quotation marks created extra white space before and after the word, below the quotation marks. This was considered aesthetically unpleasing, while the in-line quotation marks helped to maintain the typographical color, since the quotation marks had the same height and were aligned with the lower case letters. Nevertheless, while other languages do not insert spaces between the quotation marks and the word(s) quoted, the French usage does insert them, even if they are narrow spaces. The ''curved'' quotation marks ("66–99") usage, , was exported to some non-Latin scripts, notably where there was some English influence, for instance in Native American scripts and

Indic scripts The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout South Asia, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India and are used b ...

. On the other hand,

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

and Ethiopic adopted the French "angular" quotation marks, . The

Far East The Far East is the geographical region that encompasses the easternmost portion of the Asian continent, including North Asia, North, East Asia, East and Southeast Asia. South Asia is sometimes also included in the definition of the term. In mod ...

angle bracket quotation marks, , are also a development of the in-line angular quotation marks. In

Central Europe Central Europe is a geographical region of Europe between Eastern Europe, Eastern, Southern Europe, Southern, Western Europe, Western and Northern Europe, Northern Europe. Central Europe is known for its cultural diversity; however, countries in ...

, the practice was to use the quotation mark pairs with the convexity aimed ''inward.'' The

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

tradition preferred the curved quotation marks, the first one at the level of the commas, the second one at the level of the apostrophes: . Alternatively, these marks could be angular and in-line with lower case letters, but still pointing inward: . Some neighboring regions adopted the German curved marks tradition with lower–upper alignment, while some, e.g.

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

, adopted a variant with the convexity of the closing mark aimed rightward like the opening one, .

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

(and

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

) choose a convention where the convexity of both marks was aimed to the right but lined up both at the top level: . In

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...

, there was hesitation between the French tradition and the German tradition . The French tradition prevailed in

(Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus), whereas the German tradition, or its modified version with the convexity of the closing mark aimed rightward, has become dominant in

Southeastern Europe Southeast Europe or Southeastern Europe is a geographical sub-region of Europe, consisting primarily of the region of the Balkans, as well as adjacent regions and Archipelago, archipelagos. There are overlapping and conflicting definitions of t ...

, e.g. in the Balkan countries. In

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

the: version is officially recognized by the Romanian Academy. In some languages using the angular quotation marks, the usage of the single guillemet, , became obsolete, being replaced by double curved ones: , though the single ones still survive, for instance, in Switzerland. 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.

In English

In English writing, quotation marks are placed in pairs around a word or phrase to indicate: *

Quotation A quotation or quote is the repetition of a sentence, phrase, or passage from speech or text that someone has said or written. In oral speech, it is the representation of an utterance (i.e. of something that a speaker actually said) that is intro ...

or direct speech: * Mention in another work of the

title A title is one or more words used before or after a person's name, in certain contexts. It may signify their generation, official position, military rank, professional or academic qualification, or nobility. In some languages, titles may be ins ...

of a short or subsidiary work, such as a chapter or an episode: . * Scare quotes, used to mean " so-called" or to express

sarcasm Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something. Sarcasm may employ ambivalence, although it is not necessarily ironic. Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflectio ...

: . In American writing, quotation marks are normally the double kind (the primary style). If quotation marks are used inside another pair of quotation marks, then single quotation marks are used. For example: If another set of quotation marks is nested inside single quotation marks, double quotation marks are used again, and they continue to alternate as necessary (though this is rarely done). British publishing is regarded as more flexible about whether double or single quotation marks should be used. A tendency to use single quotation marks in British writing is thought to have arisen after the mid-19th century invention of steam-powered presses and the consequent rise of London and New York as distinct, industrialized publishing centers whose publishing houses adhered to separate norms. ''

The King's English ''The King's English'' is a book on English usage and grammar. It was written by the brothers Henry Watson Fowler and Francis George Fowler and published in 1906; it thus predates by twenty years '' Modern English Usage'', which was written by ...

'' in 1908 noted that the prevailing British practice was to use double marks for most purposes, and single ones for quotations within quotations. Different media now follow different conventions in the United Kingdom. Different varieties and styles of English have different conventions regarding whether terminal punctuation should be written inside or outside the quotation marks. North American printing usually puts full stops and commas (but not colons, semicolons, exclamation or question marks) inside the closing quotation mark, whether it is part of the original quoted material or not. Styles elsewhere vary widely and have different rationales for placing it inside or outside, often a matter of house style.

Typographic forms

Regarding their appearance, two shape classifications of quotation marks are used in English-language texts: * and are known as neutral, vertical, straight, typewriter, dumb or

ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...

quotation marks. The left and right marks are identical. These are the symbols found on typical

QWERTY QWERTY ( ) is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top letter row of the keyboard: . The QWERTY design is based on a layout included in the Sh ...

keyboards, although they are sometimes automatically converted to the other type by software. * and are known as typographic, curly, curved, book, or smart quotation marks. (The doubled ones are more informally known as "66 and 99".) The beginning marks are commas raised to the top of the line and rotated 180 degrees. The ending marks are commas raised to the top of the line. Curved quotation marks are used mainly in

, printing, and

typesetting Typesetting is the composition of text for publication, display, or distribution by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or '' glyphs'' in digital systems representing '' characters'' (letters and other ...

Type case A type case is a compartmentalized wooden box used to store movable type used in letterpress printing.Williams, Fred (1992). "Origin of the California Job Case". ''Type & Press'', fall 1992. http://www.apa-letterpress.com/T%20&%20P%20ARTICLES/T ...

s (of any language) generally have the curved quotation mark metal types for the respective language, and may lack the vertical quotation mark metal types. Because most computer keyboards lack keys to enter typographic quotation marks directly, much that is written using word-processing programs has vertical quotation marks. The " smart quotes" feature in some computer software can convert vertical quotation marks to curly ones, although sometimes imperfectly. The closing or right single quotation mark is identical in form to the

apostrophe The apostrophe (, ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one o ...

and similar to the

prime A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways ...

symbol. The double quotation mark is identical to the

ditto mark The ditto mark is a shorthand sign, used mostly in hand-written text, indicating that the words or figures above it are to be repeated. The mark is made using "a pair of apostrophes"; "a pair of marks used underneath a word"; the symbol (quot ...

in English-language usage. It is also similar to—and often used to represent—the

double prime The prime symbol , double prime symbol , triple prime symbol , and quadruple prime symbol are used to designate units and for other purposes in mathematics, science, linguistics and music. Although the characters differ little in appearance fr ...

symbol. These all serve different purposes. File:Underwoodfive.jpg, A

typewriter A typewriter is a Machine, mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of Button (control), keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an i ...

File:Upper case and lower case types.jpg, A

type case A type case is a compartmentalized wooden box used to store movable type used in letterpress printing.Williams, Fred (1992). "Origin of the California Job Case". ''Type & Press'', fall 1992. http://www.apa-letterpress.com/T%20&%20P%20ARTICLES/T ...

containing sorts of

movable type Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable Sort (typesetting), components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric charac ...

File:LenovoKeyboard.jpg, A wired

computer keyboard A computer keyboard is a built-in or peripheral input device modeled after the typewriter keyboard which uses an arrangement of buttons or Push-button, keys to act as Mechanical keyboard, mechanical levers or Electronic switching system, electro ...

for desktop use

Summary table

Other languages have similar conventions to English, but use different symbols or different placement. , , , , , , optional , (, quotation marks) , , - !

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...

, , , , , , , , (, quotation marks) , , - ! Azerbaijani , , , , , , , 0–1 pt , (fingernail mark) , , - !

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

, , , , , , , , , , - ! Belarusian , , , , , , , , , , - ! Bosnian , , , , , , , , , is used only in printed media. , - ! Bulgarian , , , , , , , , () (or , () for the main types of quotation marks (also called ''double quotation mark(s)''), and , () for the secondary quotation marks (also called ''single quotation mark(s)''). , * is sometimes replaced by or very rarely by * and are sometimes written as , or * There is some limited use of alternative secondary quotation marks: ; ; ; ; . , - ! Catalan , , , , , , , none , , , - ! Chinese, simplified , , , , , , , Fullwidth form , , double quotation mark) * ( zh, p=dān yǐn hào, single quotation mark) , rowspan="2" , * Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese agree on the names of the vertical rectangle quotation marks (and ) but disagree on which pair being the primary one. * In Simplified Chinese, rectangle quotation marks are only used in vertical texts. The horizontal rectangle quotation marks are not commonly used in Simplified Chinese, and in the rare cases where they are used, often the convention of Traditional Chinese is followed. * In Traditional Chinese, curly quotation marks are not commonly used, and in the rare cases where they are used, often the convention of Simplified Chinese is followed. , - ! Chinese, traditional , , , , , , , Fullwidth form , , single quotation mark) *『』 ( zh, p=shuāng yǐn hào, j=soeng1 jan5 hou6, double quotation mark) , - ! Croatian , , , , , , , , , Guillemets are preferred in typography and printing. , - !

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...

, , , , , , , , (introduce) , , - ! Danish , , , , , , , , , , - ! Dutch , , , , , , , , , * Double citation marks are only used in literal citations * The sequence when using primary and secondary level is a recommendation, not a rule. , - ! English, UK; English, Australia , , , , , , , rowspan="2" , 1–2 pt , rowspan="2" , Quotation marks, double quotes, quotes, inverted commas, speech marks , rowspan="2" , Usage of single or double as primary varies across English varieties. The double has recently been gaining more traction as primary for the formers. , - ! English, US; English, Canada , , , , , , , - !

Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...

, , , , , , , , ( lit. quoting tools) , , - !

Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also

...

, , , , , , , , , , - ! Filipino , , , , , , , , , , - ! Finnish , , , Regulated by the standard SFS 4175:2006, “Typing of numbers, marks and signs." Released by the National standards organization of Finland. , , , , , (citation marks) , , - ! rowspan="2" , French , , , rowspan="2" , , , , rowspan="2" , , * NNBSP * NBSP , rowspan="3" , (

William William is a masculine given name of Germanic languages, Germanic origin. It became popular in England after the Norman Conquest, Norman conquest in 1066,All Things William"Meaning & Origin of the Name"/ref> and remained so throughout the Middle ...

) , rowspan="3" , , - , , , , , none , - ! French, Switzerland , , , , , , , , - ! Galician , , , , , , , , , , - ! Georgian , , , , ,

, none , (, claws) , , - !

, , , , , , , , rowspan="2" , , rowspan="2" , , - ! Swiss Standard German, German, Switzerland;

Swiss German Swiss German (Standard German: , ,Because of the many different dialects, and because there is no #Conventions, defined orthography for any of them, many different spellings can be found. and others; ) is any of the Alemannic German, Alemannic ...

, , , , , , , , - !

, , , Δημήτρης Ν. Μαρωνίτης, «Το Εγκόλπιο της Ορθής Γραφής» (1998) , , , , , (, introductory marks) , , - !

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

, } , } , , } , } , , , () , Not to be confused with (, double geresh typographical mark). , - !

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

, , , , , , , , () , , - ! Hungarian , , , , , , , , , The three levels of Hungarian quotation: , - ! Icelandic , , or
, , , , , ,
(‘goose feet’) , , - !

Ido Ido () is a constructed language derived from a reformed version of Esperanto, and designed similarly with the goal of being a universal second language for people of diverse languages. To function as an effective ''international auxiliary ...

, , , , , , , , (quotation hooks) , , - ! Indonesian , , , , , , , , , (quote mark) , Usage of alternative marks seen among the literature by Jehovah’s Witnesses in Indonesian. , - !

Interlingua Interlingua (, ) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is a constructed language of the "naturalistic" variety, whose vocabulary, ...

, , , , , , , , (small

s) , , - ! Irish , , , , , , , 1–2 pt , (

) , , - !

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

, , , , , , , , rowspan="2" , (small

s) , rowspan="2" , , - ! Italian, Switzerland , , , , , , , , - ! Japanese , , , , , , , Fullwidth form , , Occasionally, other symbols, such as , are used stylistically. Quotes are almost always followed by particle . , - ! Kazakh , , „″ , , , , , , () , , - ! Karakalpak , , , , , , , , tırnaqsha (tırnaqsha) , , - ! Khmer , , , , , , , , (, quotation mark) , , - ! Korean, North Korea , , , , , , , , , , - ! Korean, South Korea , , , , , , , , , , - ! Lao , , , , , , , , () , , - ! Latvian , , , , , , , , , There is no standardized way on how quotation marks used in Latvian, depending on several usages: * is preferred as widespread use in Latvian, which is same as English. * is preferred for use in traditional handwriting and used in the Latvian Language Agency's (LVA) website. * is rarely seen in Latvian but can be found in several textbooks. It was also used in widespread usage during the occupation of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. Historically, (German-stlye quotes) was used in Latvian in the first half of 20th century. , - ! Lithuanian , , , , , , , , , , - !

Lojban Lojban (pronounced ) is a Logical language, logical, constructed language, constructed, human language created by the Logical Language Group which aims to be Syntactic ambiguity, syntactically unambiguous. It succeeds the Loglan project. The Log ...

, } , , , } , , , , Double quotes are not officially named in Lojban, but sometimes called , following the same pattern as vowel letters, e.g. ⟨a⟩ = , Lojban uses the words and , rather than punctuation, to surround quotes of grammatically correct Lojban. Double quotes can also be used for aesthetic purposes. Non-Lojban text may be quoted using . , - ! Macedonian , , , pp. 141-143, Правопис на македонскиот литературен јазик, Б. Видеоски ''etal.'', Просветно Дело-Скопје (2007) , , , , , , , - ! Maltese , , , , , , , , Virgoletti , , - ! Mongolian,

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...

, , , , , , , , , , - ! Mongolian,

Mongolian script The traditional Mongolian script, also known as the Hudum Mongol bichig, was the first Mongolian alphabet, writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most widespread until the introduction of Cyrillic script, Cy ...

, } , } , , , , , , , , - ! New Tai Lue , , , , , , , , , , - ! Norwegian , , , , , , , , , , - !

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language, spoken in parts o ...

, , , , , , , , , , , - !

Pashto Pashto ( , ; , ) is an eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan and the Pakistani province of Khyb ...

, } , , , , , , , , , - !

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

, } , , , , , , , (, guillaume) , , - ! Polish , , , , , , , none , (someone else's word) , , - ! Portuguese, Brazil , , , , , , , , rowspan="2" , , rowspan="2" , , - ! Portuguese, Portugal , , , Bergström, Magnus, & Neves Reis 2004. ''Prontuário Ortográfico e Guia da Língua Portuguesa.'' Editorial Notícias, Lisboa. , , , , , - ! Romanian , , , Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan“, Îndreptar ortografic, ortoepic și de punctuație, ediția a V-a, Univers Enciclopedic, București, 1995 , , , , none , (quotes) , , - ! Romansh , , , , , , , , , , - !

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

, , , , , , , none , , , - ! Serbian , , , , , , , , , , - !

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic (, ; Endonym and exonym, endonym: ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a member of the Goidelic language, Goidelic branch of Celtic, Scottish Gaelic, alongs ...

, , , , , , , , , , - ! Slovak , , , , , , , , (introduce) , , - ! Slovene , , , , , , , , , , - ! Sorbian , , , , , , , , , , - !

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

, , , , , , , , , , - ! Swedish , , , , , , , , , , - ! Tai Le , , , , , , , , , , - !

Tamil Tamil may refer to: People, culture and language * Tamils, an ethno-linguistic group native to India, Sri Lanka, and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka ** Myanmar or Burmese Tamils, Tamil people of Ind ...

, , , , , , , , () , , - ! Tibetan , , , , , , , , , , - ! Tigrinya , , , , , , , , , , - ! Thai , , , , , , , , (, differentiating mark), (, mouse teeth) , , - ! Turkish , , , , , , , 0–1 pt , (fingernail mark) , , - ! Ukrainian , , , , , , , none , (, little paws) , , - !

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

, , , , , , , , () , , - !

Uyghur Uyghur may refer to: * Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia (West China) ** Uyghur language, a Turkic language spoken primarily by the Uyghurs *** Old Uyghur language, a different Turkic language spoken in the Uyghur K ...

, } , } , , , , , none , , , - ! Uzbek , (Cyrillic) (Latin) , (Cyrillic) (Latin) , , , , , , (nails) , , - ! Vietnamese , , , , , , , NBSP (optional) , , , - ! Welsh , , , , , , , 1–2 pt , , , -

Specific language features

Bulgarian

Contemporary Bulgarian employs the

em dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen ...

or the quotation dash (the

horizontal bar The horizontal bar, also known as the high bar, is an apparatus used by male gymnasts in artistic gymnastics. It traditionally consists of a cylindrical metal (typically steel) bar that is rigidly held above and parallel to the floor by a syst ...

) followed by a space character at the beginning of each direct-speech segment by a different character in order to mark direct speech in prose and in most journalistic question and answer

interview An interview is a structured conversation where one participant asks questions, and the other provides answers.Merriam Webster DictionaryInterview Dictionary definition, Retrieved February 16, 2016 In common parlance, the word "interview" re ...

s; in such cases, the use of standard quotation marks is left for in-text citations or to mark the names of institutions, companies, and sometimes also brand or model names. Air quotes are also widely used in face-to-face communication in contemporary Bulgarian but usually resemble " ... " (secondary: ' ... ') unlike written Bulgarian quotation marks.

Dutch

The standard form in the preceding table is taught in schools and used in handwriting. Most large newspapers have kept these low-high quotation marks, and ; otherwise, the alternative form with single or double English-style quotes is now often the only form seen in printed matter. Neutral (straight) quotation marks, and , are used widely, especially in texts typed on computers and on websites. Although not generally common in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

any more, double angle (guillemet) quotation marks are still sometimes used in Belgium. Examples include the Flemish HUMO magazine and the Metro newspaper in Brussels.

German

The symbol used as the left (typographical) quote in English is used as the right quote in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

and

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

and a "low double comma" (not used in English) is used for the left quote. Its single quote form looks like a comma. Some fonts, e.g. Verdana, were not designed with the flexibility to use an English left quote as a German right quote. Such fonts are therefore typographically incompatible with this German usage. Double quotes are standard for denoting speech in

. This style of quoting is also used in Bulgarian,

, Danish,

...

, Georgian, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian,

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...

, Slovak, Slovene and in Ukrainian. Sometimes, especially in novels, guillemets (angled quotation marks) are used in Germany and Austria (but pointing in the opposite direction compared to French): In

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

, the French-style angle quotation mark sets are also used for

printed text: «A ‹B›?»

Finnish and Swedish

In Finnish and Swedish, right quotes, called citation marks, , are used to mark both the beginning and the end of a quote. Double right-pointing angular quotes, , can also be used. Alternatively, an en-dash followed by a ( non-breaking) space can be used to denote the beginning of quoted speech, in which case the end of the quotation is not specifically denoted (see section Quotation dash below). A line-break should not be allowed between the en-dash and the first word of the quotation. , U+2013 (8211) , – , Alternative denotation at the beginning of quoted speech

French

French uses angle quotation marks ( guillemets, or ''duck-foot quotes''), adding a 'quarter-em space' within the quotes. With proper localization, computers automatically add the proper spacing. When localization is not available, many people use a

non-breaking space In word processing and digital typesetting, a non-breaking space (), also called NBSP, required space, hard space, or fixed space ...

between the quotation mark and the nearest word inside it because the difference between a non-breaking space and a four-per-em space is virtually imperceptible, many

computer fonts A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor. A computer font specifically designed for the computer screen, and not for printi ...

do not include a quarter-em space, and the Unicode quarter-em space is breakable. Even more commonly, many people put a normal (breaking) space inside the quotation marks because the non-breaking space cannot be accessed easily from the keyboard, or because they are not aware of this typographical refinement. Using a breakable space of any kind often results in a quotation mark appearing alone at the beginning of a line, since the quotation mark is erroneously treated as an independent word. French news sites such as ''

Libération (), popularly known as ''Libé'' (), is a daily newspaper in France, founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968 in France, May 1968. Initially positioned on the far left of Fr ...

'', '' Les Échos'' and ''

Le Figaro () is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It was named after Figaro, a character in several plays by polymath Pierre Beaumarchais, Beaumarchais (1732–1799): ''Le Barbier de Séville'', ''The Guilty Mother, La Mère coupable'', ...

'' do not add manual spacing, leaving it up to localization and the browser to space the guillemets properly. Initially, the French guillemets were not angle shaped but also used the comma (6/9) shape. They were different from English quotes because they were standing (like today's guillemets) ''on'' the baseline (like lowercase letters), not raised above it (like apostrophes and English quotation marks) or hanging below it (like commas). At the beginning of the nineteenth century, this shape evolved to look like small parentheses . The angle shape was introduced later to make them easier to distinguish from apostrophes, commas and parentheses in handwritten manuscripts submitted to publishers.

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

currently does not provide alternate codes for these 6/9 guillemets on the baseline, as they are considered to be form variants of guillemets, implemented in older French typography (such as the Didot font design). With this older style there was also not necessarily any distinction of shape between the opening and closing guillemets; both often pointed to the right (as today's French closing guillemets do). In old-style printed books, when quotations span multiple lines of text (including multiple paragraphs), an additional closing quotation sign is traditionally used at the ''beginning'' of each line continuing a quotation; this right-pointing guillemet at the beginning of a line does not close the current quotation. This convention was consistently used from the beginning of the 19th century by most book printers, but is no longer in use today. Such insertion of continuation quotation marks was rigidly maintained, even at a word hyphenation break. Since these continuation marks are obsolete in French, there is no support for automatic insertion of continuation guillemets in HTML or CSS, nor in word-processors. Old-style typesetting is emulated by breaking up the final layout with manual line breaks, and inserting the quotation marks at line start, much like pointy brackets before quoted plain text e-mail: Unlike English, French does not identify unquoted material within a quotation by using a second set of quotation marks. Compare: For clarity, some newspapers put nested quoted material in italics: The French Imprimerie nationale (cf. ''Lexique des règles typographiques en usage à l'Imprimerie nationale'', presses de l'Imprimerie nationale, Paris, 2002) does not use different quotation marks for nesting quotes: In this case, when there should be two adjacent opening or closing marks, only one is written: The use of English quotation marks is increasing in French and usually follows English rules, for instance in situations when the keyboard or the software context doesn't allow the use of guillemets. The French news site ''

L'Humanité (; ) is a French daily newspaper. It was previously an organisation of the SFIO, ''de facto'', and thereafter of the French Communist Party (PCF), and maintains links to the party. Its slogan is "In an ideal world, would not exist." History ...

'' uses straight quotation marks along with angle ones. English quotes are also used sometimes for nested quotations: But the most frequent convention used in printed books for nested quotations is to style them in italics. Single quotation marks are much more rarely used, and multiple levels of quotations using the same marks is often considered confusing for readers: Further, running dialogue does not use quotation marks beyond the first sentence, as changes in speaker are indicated by a dash, as opposed to the English use of closing and re-opening the quotation. (For other languages employing dashes, see section Quotation dash below.) The dashes may be used entirely without quotation marks as well. In general, quotation marks are extended to encompass as much speech as possible, including not just unspoken text such as "he said" (as previously noted), but also as long as the conversion extends. The quotation marks end at the last word of spoken text (rather than extending to the end of the paragraph) when the final part is not spoken.

Greek

uses angled quotation marks ( – ''isagogiká''): and the quotation dash ( – ''pávla''): which translate to: A closing quotation mark, , is added to the beginning of each new paragraph within a quotation. When quotations are nested, the nested parts use English-style quotation marks, double and then (if necessary) single: . , U+2014 (8212) , — , Greek direct quotation em-dash

Hungarian

According to current recommendation by the

Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( , MTA) is Hungary’s foremost and most prestigious learned society. Its headquarters are located along the banks of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. The Academy's primar ...

the main Hungarian quotation marks are comma-shaped double quotation marks set on the base-line at the beginning of the quote and at apostrophe-height at the end of it for first level, (), reversed »French quotes« without space (the German tradition) for the second level, and thus the following nested quotation pattern emerges: * ... and with third level: * In Hungarian linguistic tradition the meaning of a word is signified by ''uniform (unpaired)'' apostrophe-shaped quotation marks: * A quotation dash is also used, and is predominant in belletristic literature. * .

Hebrew

In Israel, the traditional practice in printing and handwriting is to use „low-high” quote marks. Since the 2000s, the plain quotes have become more common. The 2013 revision of the SI-1452 standard for Hebrew keyboard, available since 2012 in Windows 8 and in desktop Linux systems, supports both systems, as does the Gboard keyboard for touchscreen devices.

Norwegian

Norwegian uses angled quotation marks ()

Polish

According to current PN-83/P-55366 standard from 1983 (but not dictionaries, see below), ''Typesetting rules for composing Polish text'' (''Zasady składania tekstów w języku polskim'') one can use either „ordinary Polish quotes” or «French quotes» (without space) for first level, and ‚single Polish quotes’ or «French quotes» for second level, which gives three styles of nested quotes: # # # There is no space on the internal side of quote marks, with the exception of '' firet'' (≈ em) space between two quotation marks when there are no other characters between them (e.g. ,„ and ’”). The above rules have not changed since at least the previous BN-76/7440-02 standard from 1976 and are probably much older. These rules on the use of guillemets conflict with the ones given by Polish dictionaries, including the ''Wielki Słownik Ortograficzny PWN'' recommended by the

Polish Language Council The Council for the Polish Language ( Polish: ''Rada Języka Polskiego'') is the official language regulating organ of Polish. It was established by the Presidium of the Polish Academy of Sciences pursuant to Resolution No. 17/96 of 9 September 1 ...

. The PWN rules state: In Polish printed books and publications, this dictionary-recommended style for guillemets (also known as »German quotes«) is used almost exclusively. In addition to being standard for second level quotes, guillemet quotes are sometimes used as first level quotes in headings and titles, but almost never for ordinary text in paragraphs. Another style of quoting is to use an em-dash to open a quote; this is used almost exclusively for quoting dialogues rather than for single statements, and is virtually always the one used for that purpose in works of fiction. An en-dash is sometimes used in place of the em-dash, especially so in newspaper texts. , U+2014 (8212) , — , Polish direct quotation em-dash , - , } , U+2013 (8211) , – , Polish direct quotation en-dash

Portuguese

Neither the Portuguese

language regulator This is a list of bodies that consider themselves to be authorities on standard languages, often called language academies. Language academies are motivated by, or closely associated with, linguistic purism and Prestige (sociolinguistics), presti ...

nor the Brazilian prescribe a particular shape for quotation marks, they only prescribe when and how they should be used. In

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

, angular quotation marks (ex. ) are traditionally used. They are the Latin tradition quotation marks, normally used by typographers, and are also the usual style in reference sources,Cunha, Celso & Lindley Cintra. ''Gramática do Português Contemporâneo''. Edições João Sá da Cunha, Lisboa, 2013 as well as on some websites dedicated to the Portuguese language. The ''Código de Redação'' for Portuguese-language documents published in the European Union prescribes three levels of quotation marks, : * in black: main sentence which contains the quotations; * in green: 1st level quotation; * in red: 2nd level quotation; * in blue: 3rd level quotation; The usage of curved quotation marks (ex. ) is growing in Portugal, probably due to the omnipresence of the English language and to the corresponding difficulty (or even inability) to enter angular quotation marks on some machines (mobile phones, cash registers, calculators, etc.). In

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

, angular quotation marks are rare, and curved quotation marks () are almost always used. An example of this can be seen in the difference between a Portuguese keyboard (which has a key for and ) and a Brazilian keyboard. The

Portuguese-speaking African countries The Portuguese-speaking African countries (; PALOP), also known as Lusophone Africa, consist of six African countries in which the Portuguese language is an official language: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Prínci ...

tend to follow Portugal's conventions, not the Brazilian ones. Other usages of quotation marks ( for double, for single) are obsolete in Portuguese..

Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian

In Belarusian,

, and Ukrainian, the angled quotation ( Belarusian: «двукоссе»,

: «кавычки», Ukrainian: «лапки») marks are used without spaces. In case of quoted material inside a quotation, rules and most noted style manuals prescribe the use of different kinds of quotation marks. Example in Russian: ( Pushkin wrote to Delvig: "Waiting for '

Gypsies {{Infobox ethnic group , group = Romani people , image = , image_caption = , flag = Roma flag.svg , flag_caption = Romani flag created in 1933 and accepted at the 1971 World Romani Congress , ...

', and publish at once.") Example in Ukrainian: ("And, of course, you can't avoid using a dictionary. One of my acquaintances, a poet and literary critic, once jokingly said: 'I prefer to read dictionaries than poems. The dictionary has the same words as in the poem, but is presented in a systematic way'. It's a joke, but 'reading dictionaries' is not as amazing and bizarre as it may seem.")

Spanish

uses angled quotation marks ( or ), with no space between the quotation mark and the quoted material. When quotations are nested in more levels than inner and outer quotation, the system is: The use of English quotation marks is increasing in Spanish; the ''

El País (; ) is a Spanish-language daily newspaper in Spain. is based in the capital city of Madrid and it is owned by the Spanish media conglomerate PRISA. It is the second-most circulated daily newspaper in Spain . is the most read newspaper in ...

'' style guide, which is widely followed in Spain, recommends them.

Hispanic America Hispanic America ( or ), historically known as Spanish America () or Castile (historical region), Castilian America (), is the Spanish-speaking countries and territories of the Americas. In all of these countries, Spanish language, Spanish is th ...

ns often use them, owing to influence from the United States.

Chinese, Japanese and Korean

Corner brackets are well-suited for Chinese, Japanese, and

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, people from the Korean peninsula or of Korean descent * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Korean **Korean dialects **See also: North–South differences in t ...

languages, because they accommodate vertical and horizontal writing equally well. China, South Korea, and Japan all use corner brackets when writing vertically. Usage differs when writing horizontally: * In

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, corner brackets are used. * In

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

, corner brackets and English-style quotes are used. * In

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...

, angle quotes are used. * In

mainland China "Mainland China", also referred to as "the Chinese mainland", is a Geopolitics, geopolitical term defined as the territory under direct administration of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War. In addit ...

, English-style quotes (full width “ ”) are official and prevalent; corner brackets are rare today. The Unicode code points used are the English quotes (rendered as fullwidth by the font), not the fullwidth forms. * In

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

and

Macau Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by p ...

, where

traditional characters Traditional Chinese characters are a standard set of Chinese character forms used to write Chinese languages. In Taiwan, the set of traditional characters is regulated by the Ministry of Education and standardized in the ''Standard Form of ...

are used, corner brackets are prevalent, although English-style quotes are also used. * In the Chinese language, double angle brackets are placed around titles of books, documents, movies, pieces of art or music, magazines, newspapers, laws, etc. When nested, single angle brackets are used inside double angle brackets. With some exceptions, this usage parallels the usage of italics in English: ::「你看過《三國演義》嗎？」他問我。 ::"Have you read ''

Romance of the Three Kingdoms ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' () is a 14th-century historical novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong. It is set in the turbulent years towards the end of the Han dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period in Chinese history, starting in 184 AD and ...

''?", he asked me. When corner brackets are being used for quotations, quote-within-quote segments are marked with white corner brackets.

Quotation dash

Another typographical style is to omit quotation marks for lines of dialogue, replacing them with an initial dash, as in lines from James Joyce's '' Ulysses'': This style is particularly common in Bulgarian, French, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

always insisted on this style, although his publishers did not always respect his preference.

Alan Paton Alan Stewart Paton (11 January 1903 – 12 April 1988) was a South African writer and anti-apartheid activist. His works include the novels '' Cry, the Beloved Country'' (1948), '' Too Late the Phalarope'' (1953), and the short story ''The Wa ...

used this style in '' Cry, the Beloved Country'' (and no quotation marks at all in some of his later work). Charles Frazier used this style for his novel '' Cold Mountain'' as well. Details for individual languages are given above. The dash is often combined with ordinary quotation marks. For example, in French, a guillemet may be used to initiate running speech, with a dash to indicate each change in speaker and a closing guillemet to mark the end of the quotation. Dashes are also used in many modern English

novel A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ...

s, especially those written in

nonstandard dialect Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken form of language, particularly when perceived as having lower social status or less prestige than standard language, which is more codified, institutionally promoted, literary, or formal. More na ...

s. Some examples include: * James Joyce's prose * William Gaddis' prose * '' Trainspotting'' by

Irvine Welsh Irvine Welsh (born 27 September 1958) is a Scottish novelist and short story writer. His 1993 novel ''Trainspotting (novel), Trainspotting'' was made into a Trainspotting (film), film of the same name. He has also written plays and screenplays, ...

* '' M/F'' by

Anthony Burgess John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993) who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer. Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his Utopian and dystopian fiction, dy ...

* '' The Book of Dave'' by

Will Self William Woodard Self (born 26 September 1961) is an English writer, journalist, political commentator and broadcaster. He has written 11 novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas and nine collections of non-fiction writing. Se ...

, which alternates between standard English chapters, with standard quotation marks, and dialect chapters, with quotation dashes * ''

A Scanner Darkly ''A Scanner Darkly'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick, published in 1977. The semi-autobiographical story is set in a dystopian Orange County, California, in the then-future of June 1994, and includes an extensive ...

'' by Philip K. Dick (not written in dialect) * The Ægypt Sequence by John Crowley, in extracts from the fictional writings of the character Fellowes Kraft, a historical novelist. According to another character, Kraft used dashes to indicate imaginary dialogue that was not documented in the original sources. * '' The Van'' by

Roddy Doyle Roderick Doyle (born 8 May 1958) is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. He is the author of eleven novels for adults, eight books for children, seven plays and screenplays, and dozens of short stories. Several of his books have been ...

* '' You Shall Know Our Velocity'' by

Dave Eggers Dave Eggers (born March 12, 1970) is an American writer, editor, and publisher. His 2000 memoir, '' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius'', became a bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Eggers is a ...

, in which spoken dialogues are written with the typical English quotation marks, but dialogues imagined by the main character (which feature prominently) are written with quotation dashes * '' A Winter in the Hills'' by John Wain in which conversations in English are indicated by ordinary quotation marks and in Welsh by quotation dashes In Italian, Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Georgian, Romanian, Lithuanian and Hungarian, a reporting clause in the middle of a quotation is marked by a dash on each side of it. The initial quotation dash is followed by a single space, and any other quotation dashes in the same paragraph have a single space on each side. A Russian example: A Hungarian example: In Finnish, on the other hand, 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. When a quote continues after the reporting clause, the clause ends with a comma, and the continuation begins with another dash: The

standard introduced a separate character to be used as a quotation dash. It may be the same length as an em-dash, which is often used instead. Some software will allow a line break after an ordinary em-dash, but prevent it after a quotation dash. Both are displayed in the following table. , U+2015 (8213) , &horbar; , Quotation dash, also known as

, - , } , U+2014 (8212) , — , Em-dash, an alternative to the quotation dash , - , } , U+2013 (8211) , – , En-dash, used instead of em-dash for quotation dash in some languages (e.g. Swedish)

Electronic documents

Different

typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...

character encoding Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using computers. The numerical v ...

s and

computer language A computer language is a formal language used to communicate with a computer. Types of computer languages include: * Software construction#Construction languages, Construction language – all forms of communication by which a human can Comput ...

s use various encodings and glyphs for quotation marks.

Typewriters and early computers

'Ambidextrous' or 'straight' quotation marks were introduced on

s to minimise the number of keys on the keyboard, and were inherited by

s and

character set Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using computers. The numerical values that make up a c ...

s. The

character set, which has been used on a wide variety of computers since the 1960s, contains the straight versions only ( and ). Many systems, such as the

personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

s of the 1980s and early 1990s, actually drew these ASCII quotes like closing quotes on-screen and in printouts, so text would ''appear'' like this (approximately): These same systems often drew the

backtick The backtick is a typographical mark used mainly in computing. It is also known as backquote, grave, or grave accent. The character was designed for typewriters to add a grave accent to a (lower-case) base letter, by overtyping it atop that let ...

(the free standing character ) as an 'open quote' glyph (usually a mirror image so it still sloped in the direction of a grave accent). Using this character as the opening quote gave a

typographic approximation A typographic approximation is a replacement of an element of the writing system (usually a glyph) with another glyph or glyphs. The replacement may be a nearly homographic character, a digraph, or a character string. An approximation is differe ...

of curved single quotes. Nothing similar was available for the double quote, so many people resorted to using two single quotes for double quotes, which would ''look'' approximately like the following: The typesetting application

TeX Tex, TeX, TEX, may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname * Tex Earnhardt (1930–2020), U.S. businessman * Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer ...

uses this convention for input files. The following is an example of TeX input which yields proper curly quotation marks. : : The

standard added

codepoint A code point, codepoint or code position is a particular position in a table, where the position has been assigned a meaning. The table may be one dimensional (a column), two dimensional (like cells in a spreadsheet), three dimensional (sheets in ...

s for slanted or curved quotes ( and , described further below), shown here for comparison: The Unicode mapping for

PostScript Standard Encoding The PostScript Standard Encoding (often spelled StandardEncoding, aliased as PostScript) is one of the character sets (or encoding vectors) used by Adobe Systems' PostScript (PS) since 1984. In 1995, IBM assigned code page 1276 (CCSID 1276) to thi ...

preserves the typographic approximation convention by mapping its equivalent of ASCII grave and single-quote to the Unicode curly quotation mark characters.

Keyboard layouts

On most keyboards, typographical quotation marks are absent. When typewriter keyboards were designed, curved quotation marks were not implemented. Instead, to limit the number of characters (and keys) required, straight quotation marks were invented as a compromise. (In countries that use angled quotation marks, those were not implemented on typewriters either.) Early computer keyboards copied layouts that had been established by typewriter keyboards. Most computer keyboards do not have specific keys for curved quotation marks or angled quotation marks. This may also have to do with computer character sets: * IBM character sets generally do not include curved quotation mark characters, therefore, keys for those marks are absent from most IBM computer keyboards. * Microsoft followed the example of IBM in its character set and keyboard design. Curved quotation marks were implemented later in Windows character sets, but most Microsoft computer keyboards do not have a dedicated key for the curved quotation mark characters. On keyboards with the key or both the key and the

numeric keypad A numeric keypad, number pad, numpad, or ten key, is the calculator-style group of ten numeric keys accompanied by other keys, usually on the far right side of computer keyboard. This grouping allows quick number entry with right hand, ...

, they are accessible through a series of keystrokes that involve these keys. Also, techniques using their Unicode code points are available; see

Unicode input Unicode input is method to add a specific Unicode character to a computer file; it is a common way to input characters not directly supported by a physical keyboard. Characters can be entered either by selecting them from a display, by typing ...

. * Macintosh character sets have always had curved quotation marks available. Nevertheless, these are mostly only accessible through a series of keystrokes involving the key. In languages that use the curved “...” quotation marks, they are available in: * none In languages that use angular «...» quotation marks, they are available in: * Macintosh Arabic keyboard; * Armenian keyboard * Canadian keyboard * French

BÉPO The BÉPO layout is an optimized French keyboard layout developed by the BÉPO community, supporting all Latin-based alphabets of the European Union, Greek, and Esperanto. It is also designed to ease programming. It is based on ideas from the D ...

keyboard * Greek keyboard * Khmer keyboard * Latvian ergonomic keyboard * Pashto keyboard * Persian keyboard * Portuguese keyboard * Syriac keyboard * Uyghur keyboard In languages that use the corner bracket 「...」 quotation marks, they are available in: * Japanese keyboard In languages that use the angle bracket 《...》 they are available in: * Mongolian keyboard * New Tai Lue keyboard In languages that use the curved „...“ quotation marks, they are available in: * Bulgarian keyboard * Georgian keyboard * Macedonian keyboard In languages that use the curved „...” quotation marks, they are available in: * Romanian Standard SR 13392:2004 keyboard In languages that use the curved ”...” quotation marks, they are available in: * none

Curved quotes within and across applications

Historically, support for curved quotes was a problem in information technology, primarily because the widely used ASCII character set did not include a representation for them. The term "smart quotes", , is from the name in several word processors of a function aimed this problem: automatically converting straight quotes typed by the user into curved quotes, the feature attempts to be "smart" enough to determine whether the punctuation marked opening or closing. Since curved quotes are the typographically correct ones, word processors have traditionally offered curved quotes to users (at minimum as available characters). Before

was widely accepted and supported, this meant representing the curved quotes in whatever 8-bit encoding the software and underlying

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

was using. The character sets for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

used two different pairs of values for curved quotes, while

ISO 8859-1 ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998, ''Information technology— 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets—Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 19 ...

(historically the default character set for the

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

es and older

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

systems) has ''no'' curved quotes, making cross-platform and -application compatibility difficult. Performance by these "smart quotes" features was far from perfect overall (variance potential by e.g. subject matter, formatting/style convention, user typing habits). As many word processors (including Microsoft Word and

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed) and Collabora Online, with Apache OpenOffice being considered mostly d ...

) have the function enabled by default, users may not have realized that the ASCII-compatible straight quotes they were typing on their keyboards ended up as something different (conversely users could incorrectly assume its functioning in other applications, e.g. composing emails). The curved

is the same character as the closing single quote. "Smart quotes" features wrongly convert initial apostrophes (as in 'tis, 'em, 'til, and '89) into ''opening'' single quotes. (An example of this error appears in the advertisements for the television show ''

'Til Death ''Til Death'' is an American sitcom that aired on Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox from September 7, 2006, to June 20, 2010. The series was created by husband and wife team Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa, who were also the writers and executive pr ...

''.) The two very different functions of this character can cause confusion, particularly in British styles, in which single quotes are the standard primary. Unicode support has since become the norm for operating systems. 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 A clipboard is a thin, rigid writing board with a clip at the top for holding paper in place. A clipboard is typically used to support paper with one hand while writing on it with the other, especially when other writing surfaces are not avail ...

if applicable) are Unicode-aware. But there are still applications which still use the older character sets, or output data using them, and thus problems still occur. There are other considerations for including curved quotes in the widely used

markup language A markup language is a Encoding, text-encoding system which specifies the structure and formatting of a document and potentially the relationships among its parts. Markup can control the display of a document or enrich its content to facilitate au ...

s HTML,

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

, and

SGML The Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML; International Organization for Standardization, ISO 8879:1986) is a standard for defining generalized markup languages for documents. ISO 8879 Annex A.1 states that generalized markup is "based on t ...

. If the encoding of the document supports direct representation of the characters, they can be used, but doing so can cause difficulties if the document needs to be edited by someone who is using an editor that cannot support the encoding. For example, many simple text editors only handle a few encodings or assume that the encoding of any file opened is a platform default, so the quote characters may appear as the generic replacement character or "

mojibake Mojibake (; , 'character transformation') is the garbled or gibberish text that is the result of text being decoded using an unintended character encoding. The result is a systematic replacement of symbols with completely unrelated ones, often ...

" (gibberish). HTML includes a set of entities for curved quotes: ‘ (left single), ’ (right single or apostrophe), &sbquo; (low 9 single), “ (left double), ” (right double), and &bdquo; (low 9 double). XML does not define these by default, but specifications based on it can do so, and XHTML does. In addition, while the HTML 4, XHTML and XML specifications allow specifying numeric character references in either hexadecimal or decimal, SGML and older versions of HTML (and many old implementations) only support decimal references. Thus, to represent curly quotes in XML and SGML, it is safest to use the decimal numeric character references. That is, to represent the double curly quotes use “ and ”, and to represent single curly quotes use ‘ and ’. Both numeric and named references function correctly in almost every modern browser. While using numeric references can make a page more compatible with outdated browsers, using named references are safer for systems that handle multiple character encodings (i.e. RSS aggregators and search results). In

file and folder names, the straight double quotation mark is prohibited, as it is a reserved character. The curved quotation marks, as well as the straight single quotation mark, are permitted.

Usenet and email

The style of quoting known as Usenet quoting uses the

greater-than sign The greater-than sign is a mathematical symbol that denotes an inequality between two values. The widely adopted form of two equal-length strokes connecting in an acute angle at the right, , has been found in documents dated as far back as 1631 ...

, prepended to a line of text to mark it as a quote. This convention was later standardized in , and was adopted subsequently by many email clients when automatically including quoted text from previous messages (in

plain text In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects ( floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a lim ...

mode).

Unicode code point table

In Unicode, 30 characters are marked Quotation Mark=Yes by character property. They all have general category "Punctuation", and a subcategory Open, Close, Initial, Final or Other (Ps, Pe, Pi, Pf, Po). Several other Unicode characters with quotation mark semantics lack the character property.

Explanatory notes

References

External links

"Curling Quotes in HTML, SGML, and XML"
David A Wheeler (2017)

by Markus Kuhn (1999) – includes detailed discussion of the ASCII 'backquote' problem
''The Gallery of "Misused" Quotation Marks''

"Commonly confused characters"
''Greg's References Pages'', Greg Baker (2016)

David Dunham (2006)
"How to type “smart quotes” (U+201C, U+201D)"
on Unix/Linux, at ''Stack Exchange''
Index of quotation-marks-related material
at the ''EnglishGrammar'' website *
"Œuvrez les guillemets"
, Pauline Morfouace (2002) – French quotation mark typography {{Navbox punctuation Punctuation Typographical symbols