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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.
Typographical symbols and punctuation marks are marks and symbols used in typography with a variety of purposes such as to help with legibility and accessibility, or to identify special cases. This list gives those most commonly encountered with Latin script. For a far more comprehensive list of symbols and signs, see List of Unicode characters.
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.
Alternatively they can be placed inside the quotation marks no matter where they appear in the quoted material; this is known as aesthetic punctuation or American style. Although known as American style and widely used in North America, the latter is also followed in British journalism and fiction writing.
In British English, punctuation marks such as full stops and commas are placed inside the quotation mark only if they are part of what is being quoted, and placed outside the closing quotation mark if part of the containing sentence. In American English, however, such punctuation is generally placed inside the closing quotation mark regardless.
In those bills, punctuation is inside the quotation marks if the punction is contained in the original or replacement language; it is outside the quotation marks if it is not. No strange, illogical rules always placing periods and the like inside quotation marks. Gene Nygaard 05:59, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
(The full stop (period) is not part of the quotation.) The aesthetic style, which is only really now used in North America, [citation needed] was developed as early typesetters thought it was more aesthetically pleasing to present punctuation that way. In the aesthetic style, the punctuation goes within the quotation marks: For example:
Punctuation in the English language helps the reader to understand a sentence through visual means other than just the letters of the alphabet. [1] English punctuation has two complementary aspects: phonological punctuation, linked to how the sentence can be read aloud, particularly to pausing; [2] and grammatical punctuation, linked to the structure of the sentence. [3]