Quotation Marks and Dialogue

Quotation marks are used to identify words that someone has said. You’ll often find them in fiction, where they signify dialogue, the words spoken by the characters. In newspapers, journalists use quotation marks to signify that something is a direct quote from a person in the article. In academic papers, quotation marks can signify that you are quoting material that was written by someone else. Quotation marks always come in pairs; the first set opens the quote and the second set closes the quote.

American vs. British Quotation Marks

American English and British English differ in the way they use quotation marks. American English uses double quotation marks (“ ”) for quotes and reserves single quotation marks (‘ ’) for quotes within quotes. In British English, the convention is the opposite. Another difference is that in American English, periods and commas go before closing quotation marks. In British English, they go after the closing quotation mark. The guidelines below apply to American English.

Dialogue

When writers become confused about quotation marks, it usually has to do with where to put other nearby punctuation. Below is an example of a conversation between two characters, with their dialogue correctly punctuated.

Martin said, “I’m going over to Jennifer’s house for a few hours.”

“You can’t be serious!” cried Fauntleroy.

“Oh, but I am,” Martin replied.

“How will you get there?” Fauntleroy asked.

“I thought I’d take the bus.”

“And,” Fauntleroy continued, “exactly how long is ‘a few hours’?”

“Probably two or three.”

“Well . . . fine. Tell Jennifer I said hello.”

In the first sentence, Martin makes a declarative statement that ends in a period. The period goes inside the quotation marks. Treat anything within quotation marks as separate from the rest of the sentence you’ve written, and make sure it has its own correct punctuation. If the quote is a full sentence, it must begin with a capital letter, even though it is within the larger structure of another sentence.

The second sentence begins a new paragraph because a different character is speaking. Fauntleroy responds with an outburst, ending with an exclamation mark. When an exclamation mark belongs to the sentence inside the quotation marks, it goes before the closing quotation mark.

In the third sentence, Martin is making another declarative statement. This time, however, the statement is followed by the dialogue tag Martin replied. In dialogue, when a sentence that would normally end in a period is followed by a dialogue tag, the period becomes a comma. It should go before the closing quotation mark.

In the fourth sentence, Fauntleroy’s query ends with a question mark. As with exclamation marks, a question mark goes before the closing quotation mark when it belongs to the sentence inside the quotation marks.

In the fifth sentence, Martin is speaking, but there is no dialogue tag. Writers often omit dialogue tags when the context of a conversation makes it clear who the speaker is.

In the sixth sentence, the dialogue tag Fauntleroy continued appears in the middle of Fauntleroy’s sentence. Notice the placement of the commas after And and continued; commas go before quotation marks. This sentence also contains a quote within a quote, which is enclosed with single quotation marks. Fauntleroy is repeating Martin’s words a few hours.

The final two sentences of the conversation also omit the dialogue tags, because it’s clear which character is speaking in both instances.

Non-Dialogue Quotations

In nonfiction or academic contexts, you may want to quote someone without styling it as dialogue. The same rules for where to put other punctuation in relation to the quotation marks apply. But you should also take care to construct your sentence so that the quoted words fit within it grammatically.

The mayor said his two golden retrievers were “the best dogs in the world” and added that he was not a cat person.

The mayor said his two golden retrievers were “the best dogs in the world. I’m not a cat person.”

In the second example, the sentence begins in the third person and past tense but abruptly switches to the first person and present tense halfway through the quote. The result is jarring for the reader, and sometimes hard to follow.

Scare Quotes

Occasionally, writers enclose certain terms they wish to distance themselves from in quotation marks. Quotation marks used this way are commonly called scare quotes or shudder quotes. It’s a way of implying that you’re using a term in an unusual way or that you don’t necessarily approve of it. For example:

Silicon Valley has fully embraced the “sharing economy.”

The scare quotes around sharing economy suggest that it’s not a fully accepted term. Perhaps the writer feels that it’s jargon or just doesn’t like it. But, unless you’re writing for an audience who is totally unfamiliar with the subject, it’s better to leave the quotation marks out and instead provide enough context to make the meaning of the term clear. Overusing scare quotes will quickly annoy readers, so reserve them for terms that truly require them:

For too many people, “computer security” is an oxymoron.

In the sentence above, the scare quotes are needed to indicate that the writer is not talking about computer security in general, but rather the term itself.

Because scare quotes usually suggest a sniff of disapproval or sarcasm from the writer, you should never use them purely for emphasis or decoration. A sign outside a restaurant that proclaims Best “Flapjacks” in Town will make people stop and wonder why the flapjacks need the scare quotes. Are they really flapjacks? Or are they some kind of inferior imitation? Likewise, if you write someone a note that says I “love” you, the recipient will probably assume that you meant the exact opposite!

#Yodify your Grammar

With the arrival of the anniversary of the initial release of the first Star Wars movie, we at Grammarly started to reflect on what makes the films so great. Being language lovers and word nerds at heart, we are particularly fascinated and charmed by the grammar of the great Jedi master, Yoda. To celebrate our love of Star Wars, we dissected a few classic Yoda-style quotes in order to better understand the patterns that #yodify the English language.

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A Grammar and Style Guide to #Yodify Your Language

 INVERTED WORD ORDER

“Powerful you have become. The dark side I sense in you.”

In Yoda-speak, modifiers (adjectives, adverbs, and modifying clauses) as well as objects often come before rather than after the subject and verb in a sentence. But the sentence doesn’t become completely scrambled:

“If into the security recordings you go, only pain will you find.”

Note that “if” is still placed at the very beginning of the sentence, as it would be in proper English.

FLEXIBLE SUBJECT-VERB ORDER

“Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained.”

In most cases, Yoda gets the subject-verb order right for English—subject then verb. Sometimes, however, he switches the order of verbs and subjects. This tells us that the placement of subjects and verbs in Yoda’s native language is much more fluid than in English.

MISSING AUXILIARY IN NEGATION and LACK OF CONTRACTIONS

“Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not.”

When Yoda wants to negate a verb he does something peculiar—he omits the helping verb “to do” and instead places “not” after the verb. “Size does not matter” becomes “Size matters not.” Curiously, Yoda’s phrasing is perfectly standard English when the main verb is “to do,” as in “Do or do not. There is no try.” In fact, one can say that Yoda learned the correct way to negate “to do” and “to be” (e.g. “I am not”) and applies that construction consistently to all verbs.

Additionally, English teachers and lovers of formal writing should be proud that—despite his other mistakes—at least Yoda never used a contraction. Every “don’t” or “won’t” or “shouldn’t” for Yoda was a do not, will not, or a should not.

DROPPED AUXILIARY IN PRESENT TENSE QUESTIONS

“Ready are you? What know you of ready?”

Many ESL learners struggle with the added “do” in English questions. As with his removal of “do” in most negations, Yoda often drops the “do” in questions; he forms questions with the interrogative pronoun, followed by the subject and verb (occasionally inverted). “Where do you go?” becomes “Where go you?” and “Why do you say that?” becomes “Why that you say?” For other tenses, the auxiliary “do” remains, but often the word order is inverted.

 

If to #Yodify something you want, follow these main rules you must:

1. Move your modifiers, modifier phrases, and objects in front of your subject-verb phrase.

2. Swap your subject-verb order.

3. Drop the auxiliary “do” when negating most verbs and place the negation after the verb.

4. Do not use contractions.

5. Drop the auxiliary “do” in present tense questions.

 

Check out some of our favorite quotes in literature, #Yodified:

“Across the sky a screaming comes.” (Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow)

“A bright and cold day in April it was, and the clocks thirteen were striking.” (George Orwell, 1984)

“The best of times it was, the worst of times it was.” (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

“You know not about me, without a book by the name of Adventures of Tom Sawyer you have read; but no matter it is.” (Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

“The saddest story have I heard, this is.” (Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier)

“The moment English one learns, set in complications do.” (Felipe Alfau, Chromos)

 

What are your favorite literary quotes, #Yodified? Share in the comments!

A Style Guide Tutorial: Navigating the Citation and Formatting Jungle

You have to write a paper, or copyedit one, and you have a heap of style manuals in front of you. Which one do you use? Are they consistent? Is there a difference between them? Is it all arbitrary?

As you work on your text, it stares up at you, glaring with its colons, commas, and parenthetical citations. Where do they go? Are the lines single or double-spaced? How wide are the margins supposed to be? Wrestling the paper into twenty different shapes, you begin to hear voices: “the year, in parentheses, after the author’s name” and “no, no, the cited page number goes at the end of the sentence, in parentheses.”

Each style guide is specific, with literally thousands of differences between them. The waters get muddier. The overlap between the guides is enough to swirl in our heads like some alphabet soup. You think you find the right formatting guide and just when you become used to working with it, you discover another publishing house prefers something else.

It becomes clear that you should be at least marginally aware of several guides. Before you decide on one manual over the other, however, consider two questions:

• What are you writing?
• Who is your audience?

MLA Style:The MLA Style Manual is the ivory tower favorite. It had its genesis in the 1980s and quickly became the standard of university English majors everywhere. Not just limited to English papers, however, MLA is the style guide for a host of humanities disciplines, including foreign language studies. It is widely recognized as the preferred formatting style of scholars. You will find it used for any paper meant for publication in a humanities journal.

AP Style: The Associated Press Stylebook is the go-to manual for journalism. It has become the industry standard for broadcasters and newspapers, primarily due to its shortcuts. In this business, writing space is scarce, so little tweaks, like using numerals instead of written numbers, saves space, money, and time. Along with the Chicago Manual, AP is a formatting style often used by mainstream publishers.

Chicago Manual: If you write a paper on history, philosophy, or religion, it would be wise to become familiar with The Chicago Manual of Style. Also called Turabian, the Chicago Manual has flexible applications. Used by editors in multiple writing arenas, you are bound to bump into it. The differences between Chicago and AP can get rather cosmetic at times, but they are important differences. Editors are familiar with both guides and picking the right one can make or break your chances, if you are trying to publish.

APA Style: Created by the American Psychological Association, APA is the preferred citation style in disciplines such as business and medicine. APA’s system strives to help readers comprehend the material they are reading. Articles written for medical journals are formatted in APA style.

Bluebook: Created by the Harvard Law Review Association, the Bluebook is the bible of legal citation style. Most judges and lawyers were educated using the Bluebook. However, some courts have adopted their own systems. You should research a court’s specific formatting style before submitting any work to them.

Scientific Disciplines: When writing a scientific article, remember that nearly all of the disciplines have their own style guides, which are often specific tweaks on more mainstream guides. These tweaks matter, however. Whether it is the American Mathematical Society (AMS style), the American Institute of Physics (AIP style), or the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE style), there is a specific formatting guide out there exclusive to each.

If you are writing an academic paper, preparing a fiction manuscript for publication, or copyediting an existing manuscript, formatting is a key component to a polished product. Depending on your audience, or where you wish to publish the work, there are very specific guidelines concerning how a text should appear. A little research in the beginning will save you a lot of rewriting, and reformatting later.

What’s your preferred writing style? Share in the comments!

Eight Christmas Grammar Mistakes That Will Make You Think

How many times have you seen “Happy Holidays from the Jones’s” or “Mary Christmas” in a Christmas card?

When you’re working through a stack of Christmas cards, it can be difficult to cross your t’s and dot your i’s, let alone remember a series of seemingly random holiday-related grammar rules. So, in the spirit of holiday giving, we’re giving you eight Christmas grammar tips for LitMas. Let us know how we did in the comments below!

1 Correctly Pluralize Your Family Name

Source: Country Living

Let’s start with the obvious misstep we see every year on at least one holiday card or Christmas letter: the dreaded surname plural. It can be difficult to keep your plurals and possessives apart, especially if your surname ends in an s! So check out this handy guide from our handbook to keep your possessives in check.

2 Double-Check Your Holiday Homonyms

via GIPHY

If you’re writing quickly, you might be more likely to misspell things you would normally catch. Here’s a list of common holiday homonyms to avoid:

1. Mary Christmas → Merry Christmas 2. Happy Holiday → Happy Holidays 3. Mold wine → Mulled wine 4. Satan Claus → Santa Claus 5. Old Lang Zyne → Auld Lang Syne

3 Remember Your I vs. Me Manners

BOOM! Merry Christmas from President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and I…. http://t.co/dbv5CJSh

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) December 14, 2012

We understand. When typing quickly, it can be difficult to remember when to use I and me when including yourself in a list. Luckily, it’s not that hard once you know the rule for these two pronouns, which you can read about in this guide.

4 Don’t Welcome Wordiness Into Your Greetings

Writing the perfect holiday card or letter updating your family and friends on the events of the last year is an art, not a science. But if you err on the side of brevity, your loved ones will thank you! Try to cut unnecessary descriptors and introductory text in favor of an action-packed account of only the most important parts of the last year. And if you need more help, check out our guide to holiday greetings.

5 Don’t Turn Into the Comma Grinch

via GIPHY

In case you don’t know the plot of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, it involves the theft of an entire town’s Christmas presents. When you’re writing things around the holidays (or at any time of the year), don’t steal extra commas! Try to cut commas from your writing where possible, instead of hoarding all the commas to yourself.

6 Use Apostrophes in Your Greetings

Too much relaxing time on my hands to notice grammar fail on @Tesco Christmas bags… pic.twitter.com/9xx2adThNk

— Sarah Marl (@SarahMarl) December 21, 2015

Yes, this is a duplicate of our first entry on this list. But apostrophe use is as important as it is difficult! Remember, even if it’s not a name you’re trying to make into a plural, you should never, ever use an apostrophe.

7 Don’t Follow Santa’s Bad Example

Usually, Santa is a source of joy for children and grammar nerds alike. But the “you better” lyrics in “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” are enough to land him on the naughty grammar list for life. To set the record straight, this phrase should be “you’d better,” as in “you had better.” You had better avoid this construction in your next important email, unless you would like to delight the office grammar pedant!

8 Tame Your Inner Pedant During the Holidays

via GIPHY

If you are your office’s, family’s, or friend group’s resident grammar pedant, here’s a plea from fellow grammar nerds: give it a rest over the holidays. Even if Aunt Maple wishes you a “Happy New Years” or Great Uncle Merle thinks “Happy Holiday from the Smith’s” is a great way to sign a card, we should cut each other a little slack during the most wonderful time of the year. Practice restraint with your grammar criticism now, and you might be able to make a lasting impact if you restart your “helpful suggestions” during New Year’s resolution season.

21 Books to Read Before Your 21st Birthday

Our memories of the books we read as children tend to stick fondly in our minds for years after we’ve grown up. We asked our Twitter followers to share their favorite children’s books with us, and here’s what they said. Whether you have children of your own or you’re looking to recapture a bit of the magic of childhood, there’s something on this list for you:

1. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett 2. Matilda by Roald Dahl 3. Love You Forever by Robert Munsch 4. Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola 5. The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread by Kate DiCamillo 6. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren 7. Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi 8. Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome 9. The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis 10. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery 11. Goodnight Opus by Berkeley Breathed 12. The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle 13. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White 14. From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg 15. Wonder by R.J. Palacio 16. Uncle Wiggily’s Story Book by Howard R. Garis 17. The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein 18. The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein 19. The Balloon Tree by Phoebe Gilman 20. The Kiss That Missed by David Melling 21. Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney

What’s your favorite children’s book? Share the title and author in the comments!

A Grammar Lesson: Direct and Indirect Objects

An object is the part of a sentence that gives meaning to the subject’s action of the verb. For example: Alice caught the baseball. Subject=Alice Verb=caught Object=baseball

A direct object answers the question of who(m) or what. In the sentence above, you could determine that ‘baseball’ is a direct object by asking the question: What did Alice catch? She caught the baseball. Baseball is the direct object.

An indirect object answers the question of to whom, for whom, or for what. For example: Max pitched Alice the baseball.

Max (subject) pitched (verb) the baseball (direct object) to whom? He pitched it to Alice. Alice is the indirect object.

To learn more about sentence structure, read this blog post about verb tenses.

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