“Wrong” is an inappropriate word to use here, Johanna, and as a linguist and an editor, you, I suspect, are perfectly aware of that.
I’m also a professional editor, and not just on the side. These are style issues that depend on the rules set by your publication. It’s perfectly fine to use quotation marks instead of italics for all titles. In fact, for decades the AP style guide used no italics at all. I haven’t seen the current edition, so I don’t know whether it has changed.
In fact, my current publication uses italics for all titles of works, and doesn’t make a distinction between album/song or series/episode titles.
If you’re in charge of your own style, then it’s up to you to choose whether you want to use quotation marks or italics.
Really? I’ve always been taught it’s the other way round. That Americans put single quotes where we use double; that’s why we call that " a quotation mark.
I have absolutely no recollection of seeing single inverted commas anywhere in a British publication. Full stop. (that’s ‘period’ to you guys I guess. – And demonstrates the only time single inverted commas are used: when it’s an individual word being quoted, and even then it’s not universal. Speech marks are double, always.) If it was ever a rule here, it must be very antiquated.
I could have sworn I’ve seen single quotes used in British publications, but you made me doubt myself. So I went a-googling, and found that it’s not entirely cut-and-dried, but I can find at least some cites that agree with me.
Back in the '50s, we were taught to put punctuation inside the quotes, no matter what. Since then, the “common sense” approach has modified this, for the better. But I’ve never seen punctuation outside the quotes, for an actual quotation.
I’d agree that it’s not cut and dried, but I also note that your quotes contradict each other, one says
written in 1908, indicating it was standard.
And the latter says
I also note that most of your sources are American; so I checked the Guardian stylebook, They clearly state quotes should go in quotation marks unless quoted within someone else’s speech.
** Lynne Truss’s** Eats Shoots and Leaves says:
indicating the practice has been around for at least since she was young.
I can only vouch for experience; I have read hundreds of thousands of newspapers, articles, books and leaflets written in the UK in my lifetime and cannot recall a time when inverted commas were used to encompass speech except inside another quotation, or outlining a single word.
Bizarre - that has always been a hallmark of British books in my experience; their use of single quotes. Maybe the style is different in newspapers and magazines, though.
Wait, what? I’ve read several British novels with single quote (') marks rather than double. R F Delderfield, Sarah Waters, Herbie Brennan etc. I’ve never seen an American do that, and frankly it irritates the crap out of me when I see it in a British book…but not as much as Frank McCourt not using any punctuation at all around conversation.
Unless the books on my bookshelf are unusual, then this is right - British books nearly always use single quotation marks. I just flicked through a few and the only ones with double quotation marks are The Amber Spyglass and a couple of Janet Evanoviches. However, the few magazines I have around, and the BBC and Independent websites, all use double quotation marks. Odd that there’s a difference.
I learned to do it that way when writing computer code. It makes a heck of a lot of difference whether the punctuation is inside or outside the quote marks in code!
And, in my opinion, people don’t say commas or periods. They are just marks to help clarify text. You can argue that they are pauses, but a pause at the end of a quote is as useful as rests at the end of a piece of music.
I also think periods looks silly with blank space in front of them. I use such only when clarity allows no other option.
I wondered if age has anything to do with it, so I went and checked my bookshelf. All the books matched the newspapers; double quotation marks, not inverted commas, bar two: an Anne McCaffrey and a very early copy of a work by Tolkien. But all the others, including The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe used double quotes. I can only suppose that it was something that some British publications used, sometime between 1908 and the '70s. But it doesn’t seem to be universal. And I agree, elfkin477 it’s very irritating.
Nope. Most of the books I’m talking about are from the past five years. Four of them were published last year.
It really is very odd… I mean, I’m sure you’re not lying, but British books using single quotation marks is a well-known thing, and not an outdated one either, though I wouldn’t be surprised if recent books were more likely to use double quotation marks.
In early 1970 (when I was 10) I read the 1965 authorized Ballantine paperback edition of the Lord of the Rings—published in the United States, mind you—and it had main quotes in single quote marks (“inverted commas” as they call them in the UK) and double quote marks for embedded quotes. So from a young age I got used to seeing quotes done either way. Incidentally, I loved the smell of the paper Ballantine used for those three books, and would put the opened book up to my nose and inhale deeply. If I were to smell that paper again, it would instantly take me back 42 years…
Trivia note: For X-treme embedded quotes (alternating single and double in an extended series of nesting levels), try John Barth’s “Menelaiad” in Lost in the Funhouse. It’s of interest just to see how Barth sets up that highly contrived quote just for the sheer typographical joy of it.
Is your colleague an idiot? Sorry, but I had to unload.
Working my way slowly through Eats, Shoots and Leaves because nobody could be that stupid about the Oxford Comma.
American style would have the period inside in both cases. However, with a question mark it delends on whether it belongs to the quote or the sentence.