When single quotes are used for quotations, does everything flip?

[Claverhouse]

@Elendil_s_Heir

Tangent: The usual British style is single quotation marks for all dialogue, isn’t it? As in:

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,’ Charles Dickens told me.

Not in Dickens’ time: I’ve never seen a British book from before, say, 1950 that did not use double quotes for dialogue.

Then publishers decided to save money by using single quotes.

[lisiate]

Really? Surely any such saving would be tiny - effectively only the reduced amount of ink as you wouldn;t have any savings in paper as the space saved wouldn’t amount to a whole line on any one page.

[Keeve]

@Rhythmdvl

It goes back to the lead agency’s style guide:

Single quotation marks should be used to enclose names of documents, themes of conferences, phrases or specific words, terms, words being defined, radio programmes, etc.
…
Double quotation marks are used for direct speech only. Direct (or quoted) and indirect
speech should not be confused

That is totally bizarre to me. I would never distinguish between a direct quote and the name of a document. Both are examples of speech which is not being said directly by the current author, and needs to be set off from the main document, but I never knew that one needs to be set off any more or less than the other. I’d use the same quotes for all, and switch only for quote-within-a-quote.

[md2000]

If the group is going to complete reverse the English world standard, then all bets are off. Do whatever the heck you want. If your job is to support a style guide that is 180 degrees different than accepted English usage, then my inclination would be to ensure the final result is as bizarre as possible. (Single, then double, then triple, then quadruple… )

‘Look, Mister Smith, ten thousand soldiers marching down the road, all of them out of step except my son Johnny!’