Only Slate Plus members can gift Slate stories. Become a member to share 10 free articles a month. Andrew Heisel’s Lexicon Valley article last year on single versus double quotation marks piqued the ...

Our language needs quotation marks. Without them, we couldn't know who said what to whom or even what they meant. Unfortunately, using them can prove tricky. Quotations marks appear in both double and ...

With dialogue, specific punctuation is needed. Most often, commas and periods go within the quotation marks, but there are some forms of punctuation and examples that go outside of the quotation marks ...

A few years ago while copy editing an article, I was shocked to see something like this: “I lecture my sales staff about what I call ‘me syndrome,’” Jones said. What shocked me was the punctuation.

I don’t remember when I first learned about single quotation marks, but I have a vague memory of assuming they were as useful as quotation marks, or close to it. Sometimes you quote someone. Sometimes ...