Quotation marks

You won’t use quotation marks as much as other types of punctuation. Still, by using them — or, more precisely, the quotations within them — you give credibility to opinions, help start documents, make PR material more compelling, and spice up sales and marketing materials. That’s because quotation marks distinguish the direct words of a speaker or writer from the rest of the message. The language within the marks also provides a nice change from the narrative voice and gives your readers an interesting third-person perspective.Here are the basic rules for keeping your quotation marks in the right place:
• Use quotation marks when directly repeating what you or other people said or wrote.
• Use quotation marks (or italics) with unusual or made-up words, and with common words used in an unusual way:

He thought we should call our children’s program “Start-Up.”
• Use quotation marks around the names of short works such as newsletter articles. Reserve italics or underlining for longer works:

If you want more information about our organization, read the article “What’s New at Cabot, Inc.?” in this month’s issue of the company newsletter A Forward Look.

• Always place periods and commas inside the quotation marks, whether you’ve quoted one word or ten:

According to the radio, progress on the new development was “slow.”

• Place dashes, question marks, exclamation points, and semicolons outside the quotation marks when they apply to the whole sentence and not simply to the quoted portion:

Why must we “prepare for changes”?

• When you have a quotation within a quotation, set it off with single quotation marks (apostrophes):

“The customer asked me, ‘Why didn’t this machine work right out of the box?’ and I replied, ‘Because it wasn’t plugged in yet.’ ”

• Normally, you use a new paragraph for each quoted speaker. The exception is when phrases are short and fit together in a single sentence, as in the last example or the following:

Students say our adult ed classes are “fun,” “a stimulating experience,” and “as worthwhile as a trip abroad.”

• To insert a clarifying phrase in a quotation, use square brackets to signal readers that it isn’t part of the original sentence:

Your manual states, “Never flip this switch [the power switch] without first turning off the monitor.”

• Some word-processing programs offer a smart quotes feature that makes quotation marks curl like little parentheses (as in this book) rather than uniformly straight up and down (as on a type

writer). This can make your document look more professional. But these programs can mess up. If you don’t check to make sure all your quotation marks are facing in the right direction, this feature can make your document look less professional.
• Finally, if you have quotations longer than two or three sentences, yo’ll probably want to set them off as extracts. In this case, don’t use quotation marks. Instead, make the quotations separate paragraphs with narrower margins and use smaller or more tightly spaced type:

But the best reviews for our service come from our customers:

You guys are fantastic! I’ve tried many motivational seminars, but yours was the first that really got me excited! I want to send all the people in my department to your next workshop, and I’m recommending that the company invite you guys to speak to our whole workforce!