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In English writing, quotation marks or inverted commas, also known informally as quotes, talking marks, [1] [2] speech marks, [3] quote marks, quotemarks or speechmarks, are punctuation marks placed on either side of a word or phrase in order to identify it as a quotation, direct speech or a literal title or name.
Quotation marks [A] are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to identify direct speech, a quotation, 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. [3] Quotation marks have a variety of forms in different languages and in different media.
A quotation or quote is the repetition of a sentence, phrase, or passage from speech or text that someone has said or written. [1] In oral speech, it is the representation of an utterance (i.e. of something that a speaker actually said) that is introduced by a quotative marker, such as a verb of saying.
With quotation marks, we have no rigid rule. Some users prefer using one style (punctuation goes outside the quotation marks when quoting only part of a sentence, but inside when quoting a compete sentence), while other prefer another style (punctuation always goes inside quotation marks).
When quoting a quotation that itself contains a quotation, alternate between using double and single quotes for each quotation. See § For a quotation within a quotation for details. When quoting text from non-English languages, the outer punctuation should follow the Manual of Style for English quote marks .
For example, "Stop!" has the punctuation inside the quotation marks because the word "stop" is said with emphasis. However, when using "scare quotes", the comma goes outside. Other examples: Arthur said the situation was "deplorable". (The full stop (period) is not part of the quotation.)
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Logical quotation is its own style, as required by various journals, and documented in style guides for more than 100 years. It coincidentally happens to be very similar to non-North-American style as used by most publishers, but there are differences especially in the "rules" applied, even if they often result in the same output.