Speech and Quotation Marks

Speech and Quotation Marks

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Double Quotation Marks for Speech

Speech marks (double quotation marks) should be used for all quotes and speech – whether real or imaginary. The first letter inside the speech marks should be capitalised.

Examples:

• "Well, I spoke to Harry and he said, 'There can be no place for terrible punctuation.'"

• "Well, I thought to myself, 'My punctuation has always been good.'"

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Formatting Rules

• Always precede speech with a comma

• Capitalise the first letter inside the speech marks

Examples:

• Respondent: And then she said, "Please use speech marks."

• Respondent: And then she was like, "Speech marks are important."

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Single Quotation Marks

Inverted commas should be used when:

• Excerpts from printed text are being quoted

• Separating text out of a sentence to make it identifiable as a name

• Speech within speech

Examples:

• "We worked on the 'Style Guide' project together."

• "When I spoke to Mary, she said 'Well I thought that he said "I'm not sure, ask Sarah" so that's what I did', which led me to..."

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Titles of Works

• Title of a work should be in single quotation marks: 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'

• Punctuation goes outside the quotation marks unless included in the title

• Titles discussed as part of a named work (poems, tracks) should be in italics: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

• Music singles discussed in isolation (not as part of an album) should be in single quotation marks rather than italics