Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Punctuation question

What are these marks called - ’ ‘ '

As in what is used for won't... or 'the source'

Thanks.

Well, what you use in won't is an apostrophe. THe one you use in 'the source' is something I'd refer to as 'inverted comma'.

The one in "won't" is an apostrophe. But aren't the ones in 'the source' considered "quote marks"? I know that these " " are quotes but can't these ' ' be too?

Sorry, I wasn't much help.

DJ

Ah, yes, I should have realized the one was an apostrophe. But somehow 'quotes' doesn't sound right unless it's "quotes". Well, hopefully someone else will know...

Thanks, guys.

These two look like diacritic marks to me.
Did you find them on your keyboard to the right of the question mark and they only appear, if you make another keystroke? Then they are diacritic marks and you shouldn't use them as apostrophs or quote marks or anything else.
They are strictly for use with other characters. They are used for example in French to produce letters like é and è.
Use the proper apostroph, the diacritic marks might not be recognised by all programmes, file formats, or browsers.

Chaos is correct about the diacritic marks. As for the quotes, either single or double quotes are acceptable. However, if you put a quote within a quote ("Coolidge said, 'I do not choose to run.' Beats me what he meant.") you should alternate them. If you use single quotes on the entire sentence, you should place double quote marks around the interior quote.

Using asterisks ('*') around a statement indicates some kind of quote, but it's not standard. I've seen it used on this board to indicate thoughts or mental communication. Just make sure you tell your readers what it means before you use it, unless there's no way to miss what you mean by its use.

Interestingly, until a few years ago, many books printed in the UK used single quotes where US publishers would use double quotes. I have not noticed that in books I've read published in the last two decades or so. I guess that's another victory for the rowdy Colonials.

No, they are diacritical marks as for French, Spanish, etc. My keyboard isn't set up like that. (It's set up for English only, and thus, unless I'm using a foreign word, I don't need the diacritical marks, and when I do, MS Word supplies them for me automatically.) The reason they looked different is because they were 'smart quotes' that MS Word automatically does. They only appear here if I cut and paste - like this: ‘smart quotes’.

Well, it sounds like from what you are saying, Terry, that they are called single quotes. I couldn't remember what they were called, but now that you say that, it's jogging my memory.

And I had no idea that speech was ever encased in the single quotes. I don't think I've ever seen that. (Mental thought and your example of a quote within a quote, yes, but not for speech like: Clark said, 'Yes.' All I've ever seen is: Clark said, "Yes." Hmmm... Very interesting.)

Thanks, guys.

Yes, I'd call those single quotes.

I have seen speech encased in single quotes in novels I've read. I seem to recall being told at one point that this was one of those UK/US punctuation variations - that US novels use single quotes and we use double quotes. But not sure about that being the case. The American novel I'm currently reading uses double quotes. So who knows? I definitely have seen single quotes used that way in published novels, in the past, though.

LabRat

As far as I learnt it it's like that:

In a dialogoe you use the double qotation marks.

"Hi, Lois," Clark said.

The single quotes are used when the speaker refers to something another person said and is not using reported speech. (heck, I hope that was the right term. Why on earth do I bother with English? )

"I met Clark yesterday, and all he said was 'hi'," Lois complained as she met her sister.

The double quotation marks are used when I want to quote the text that another person wrote or said, or when I use the title of something.

"Cogito ergo sum" (René Descartes)

In his famous poem "Prometheus" Goethe...

The single marks are also used when I don't quote a whole text but only a few words or write something that should be in quotation marks for other reasons. For example slang in a formal text or anything similiar.

When he is speaking of 'Knabenmorgenblütenträume' he means that...

In the spoken language you can use short forms, like for example 'aren't' or 'isn't'.

Maybe that's just the German way, so concerning your language I might be wrong. I hope that I was able to help, though.

I thought it was the other way around. Every American novel I've ever read (and I have books going back to the 1930's and before) has had double quotes. However, I've read a few handfuls of British romance novels, a lot of them used single quotes.

Yes, the UK-English norm for dialogue is single quotes, and to the best of my knowledge that's still the case, though these days almost all the fiction I buy is published in North America. Though I do have on my desk right at this moment a Doctor Who novel published in the UK in 2005 and speech is enclosed in single quotes.


Wendy

I don't ever remember seeing an American novel with single quotes, but then I'm not quite sure I ever remember seeing any novel like that. I do have a few British romances. (I think I still have them.) I'll have to pull them out and give them a look.



Hmm... Very interesting. Actually, all I was asking was what the single quotation marks were called, but this has just brought up a whole interesting conversation. In the above examples, I would probably have used single quotes. But I have no idea if that's actually correct or not. Hmmm....

Well, if I remember right I was told to use quotes like that when writing a non-fictional serious text about something.

I wouldn't insist on that, though and proabably it's okay to use both kinds of quotation marks if you stick to it.

After all there are also those marks: « »

They are at least used in France and in published books in Germany.

And in my language the first quoatation marks are looking like that when you write spoken language: „text“

And they are like this "text" when you set one word into the marks, for example the Prometheus mentioned above.

Anyone still aware what I'm talking about?

Well, I am. But that's not surprising at all since I've made the same observations.

I don't speak German, but my understanding of the language is that when a new and complex term is needed, a really big word comes into existence, usually a mimimum of fourteen syllables in length.

In English, we just reach over into some other language and steal a word or three. Of course, we never admit it.

Seems that you've understood German pretty well, Terry. And I doubt that we stop with fourteen syllables.