Comments on: The Quandary of Quotation Marks (” “)

By: Laurie Price

Laurie Price — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:34:43 +0000

Re: What if I’m Canadian? –
There is something called “mid-Atlantic” style, which I think of as a euphemism for Canadian.

I have Canadian clients who request that I use: The Economist Styleguide — which includes your suggestions for quote marks (in fact, their section on quote marks is fairly extensive), and for spelling issues, The New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors.

My Canadian friends have verified this — they spell “analyze” as “analyse,” and “categorize” as “categorise,” yet “realize,” “memorize” and “finalize” are spelled how we would spell them.

By: Marji Yablon

Marji Yablon — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:58:49 +0000

Up until today, I never doubted that punctuation — any punctuation — that wasn’t part of a quote should go outside the quotation marks. After reading your post, out of curiosity, I skimmed some of my published articles. In every one of them, that little habit of mine had been corrected, so that it all agreed with the rules as you have explained them. In any back-and-forth I’d done with an editor, I had failed to notice that change — or maybe it had come later.

So, thanks. From now on, I can give them their punctuation correctly from the start. But perhaps some day, I’ll write the original version of something for a British publication. Then, I’ll be able to both BE correct and FEEL correct!

By: Anne Kelley

Anne Kelley — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 04:18:12 +0000

I’m not sure I’ve ever been informed about international differences regarding quotation mark rules — thanks for the crash course!

By: The Essay Expert

The Essay Expert — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 05:05:06 +0000

Thanks for your great comment, Pattie! Yes, to clarify, your readers’ expectations and demands always come first. If you are writing professionally in any country, find out which style guide your employer wants you to use and follow it! It is for personal correspondence or other unregulated writing that I believe the writer gets to choose.

By: Lucy Cripps

Lucy Cripps — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 21:26:54 +0000

Thanks for this Brenda.

It’s no wonder we manage to get the rules in a muddle when you consider how great the range of sites we read from in a day.

I, for one, don’t check the origin of all the sites I visit. To make it even more confusing, we see posts on social networking sites from all over the world.

A UK reader may simply scoff and tut at a US poster’s grammar/punctuation, blissfully unaware that the US reader is doing just the same back!

We need to raise awareness of our divided language.