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Revision as of 09:33, 18 May 2006 editBuncic (talk | contribs)496 edits Angled quotation marks in various European languages← Previous edit Revision as of 13:27, 19 May 2006 edit undo124.168.242.150 (talk) Quotations and speechNext edit →
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: ''Right:'' HAL said that everything was going extremely well. : ''Right:'' HAL said that everything was going extremely well.
: ''Right:'' HAL said, “All systems are functional.” : ''Right:'' HAL said, “All systems are functional.”

However, another convention when quoting text in the body of a paragraph or sentence, especially in philosophical essays, is to recognise double quotation marks as marking an exact quote, and single quotation marks as marking a paraphrased quote or a quote where pronouns or plurality have been changed in order to fit the sentence containing the quote.


=== Irony === === Irony ===

Revision as of 13:27, 19 May 2006

For other meanings of the ' and " marks, see below.
It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles. (discuss)
Punctuation marks
apostrophe ’  '
brackets   ( )  { }  ⟨ ⟩
colon :
comma ,
dashes ‒  –  —  ―
ellipses …  ...  . . .  ⋯
exclamation marks ! ¡
full stop, period .
hyphens ‐ -
interpunct ·
interrobangs ‽ ⸘
question marks ? ¿
quotation marks ‘ ’  “ ”  ' '  " "
‹ ›  « »
semicolon ;
slash, stroke, solidus /
In other scripts
Related
Category

Quotation marks, also called quotes or inverted commas, are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off 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 character.

They have a variety of forms in different languages and in different media.

Usage

Quotations and speech

Single or double quotation marks are used to denote either speech or a quotation. Neither style is an absolute rule though double quotes are preferred in the USA, but a publisher's or even an author's style may take precedence. The important rule is that the style of opening and closing quotes must be matched.

‘Good morning, Dave,’ greeted HAL.
“Good morning, Dave,” greeted HAL.

For speech within speech, the other is used as inner quotation marks.

‘HAL said, “Good morning, Dave”,’ recalled Frank.
“HAL said, ‘Good morning, Dave’,” recalled Frank.

Sometimes, quotations are nested in more levels than inner and outer quotation. Nesting levels up to five can be found in the Bible. In these cases, questions arise about the form (and names) of the quotation marks to be used. The most common way is to simply alternate between the two forms.

“…‘…“…‘ …   … ’…”…’…”

If such a passage is further quoted in another publication, then all of their forms have to be shifted over by one level.

In most cases, quotations that span multiple paragraphs should be block-quoted, and thus do not require quotation marks. Quotation marks are used for multiple-paragraph quotations in some cases, especially in narratives. The convention in English is to give the first and each subsequent paragraph opening quotes, using closing quotes only for the final paragraph of the quotation. The Spanish convention, though similar, uses closing quotes at the beginning of all subsequent paragraphs beyond the first.

When quoted text is interrupted, such as with the phrase he said, a closing quotation mark is used before the interruption, and an opening quotation mark after. Commas are also often used before and after the interruption, more often for quotations of speech than for quotations of text.

“HAL,” noted Frank, “said that everything was going extremely well.”

It is generally considered incorrect to use quotation marks for paraphrased speech:

Wrong: HAL said that “Everything was going extremely well.”
Right: HAL said that everything was going extremely well.
Right: HAL said, “All systems are functional.”

However, another convention when quoting text in the body of a paragraph or sentence, especially in philosophical essays, is to recognise double quotation marks as marking an exact quote, and single quotation marks as marking a paraphrased quote or a quote where pronouns or plurality have been changed in order to fit the sentence containing the quote.

Irony

Another important use of quotation marks is to indicate or call attention to ironic or apologetic words. Ironic quotes can also be called scare, sneer, shock, or distance quotes. Ironic quotes are sometimes gestured in verbal speech using air quotes:

My brother claimed he was too “busy” to help me.

Ironic quotes should be used with care. Without the intonational cues of speech, they could obscure the writer's intended meaning. They could also be confused easily with quotations.

In a similar sense, quotes are also used to indicate that the writer realizes that the word is not being used in its (currently) accepted sense.

In the fifteenth century, we “knew” that the Sun's revolution divided day from night.
Woody Allen joked, “I'm astounded by people who want to ‘know’ the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.”

Emphasis (discouraged)

Quotes are also sometimes used for emphasis in lieu of underlining or italics, most commonly found on signs or placards. This is generally discouraged not only because it is historically an improper usage, but also because it is easily confused with ironic or altered-usage quotation.

For sale: “fresh” fish, “fresh” oysters
Teller Lines Open until 12:00 Noon for your “Convenience”

The first statement above could be construed to imply that the word fresh is not being used with its everyday meaning, even so far as to mean that the fish or oysters are anything but "fresh". The second statement would almost certainly be an innocent mistake, but someone familiar with proper usage might think that the "convenience" was for the bank employees, not the customers.

Either quotes or italic type can emphasize that an instance of a word refers to the word itself rather than its associated concept.

Cheese is derived from milk.
“Cheese” is derived from a word in Old English.
Cheese has calcium, protein, and phosphorus.
Cheese has three e’s.

In HTML/XHTML, a semi-semantic way to distinguish regular quotes from distance quotes is to use the <q> tag for the former while using actual quotation marks for distance quotes. It is only semi-semantic because the behavior for non-eye-centered media is uncertain. Still, it is safer than not introducing any distinction at all.

Titles of artistic works

Quotation marks, rather than italics, are generally used for the titles of shorter works. Whether these are single or double is again a matter of style:

  • Short fiction, poetry, etc.: Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Sentinel”
  • Book chapters: The first chapter of 3001: The Final Odyssey is “Comet Cowboy”
  • Articles in books, magazines, journals, etc.: “Extra-Terrestrial Relays”, “Wireless World”, October 1945
  • Album tracks, singles, etc.: David Bowie’s “Space Oddity

Nicknames and false titles

Quotation marks are used to offset a nickname embedded in an actual name, or a false or ironic title embedded in an actual title; for example, Jennifer “J-Lo” Lopez.

Typographical considerations

Punctuation

The American convention is for sentence punctuation to be included inside the quotation marks, even if the punctuation is not part of the quoted sentence, while the British style is to have the punctuation outside the quotation marks for small quoted phrases:

Someone shouted, ‘Shut up!’. (British)
Someone shouted, “Shut up!” (American)

In American English, commas and periods (full stops) always go inside the quotation marks, single or double:

Also called “plain quotes,” they are teardrops.
Dave asked, “Did HAL say ‘Good morning,’ or did he not?”

The American English rule is often not applied if the presence of the punctuation mark inside the quotation marks will lead to ambiguity, for example in describing commands to be typed into a computer:

In the File name text field, type "HelloWorldApp.java", including the quotation marks.

Due to the influence of computer science (see BNF rules for describing formal languages), what is essentially (if unknowingly) the British standard has become more widely accepted in the U.S.:

Also called “plain quotes”, they are teardrops.
Dave asked, “Did HAL say ‘Good morning’, or did he not?”

Despite what is sometimes written on discussions of punctuation, British positioning is the same as American in complete quoted speech:

‘Good morning, Dave,’ said HAL.

Before the advent of mechanical type, the order of quotation marks with periods and commas was not given much consideration since the symbols did not form a strict sequence. Today, most areas of publication conform to one of the two standards above. However, in subjects such as chemistry and software documentation it is conventional to include only the precise quoted string within the quotes. This avoids ambiguity with regard to whether a punctuation mark belongs to the quote:

Enter the URL as “www.wikipedia.org”, the name as “Misplaced Pages”, and click "OK".
The URL starts with “www.wikipedia.”. This is followed by “org” or “com”.

Question marks and exclamation marks must rely on logic to determine whether they go inside or outside:

Did he say, “Good morning, Dave”? (American)
No, he said, “Where are you, Dave?” (American)

In the first two sentences above, only one punctuation mark is used at the end of each. Regardless of its placement, only one end mark (?, !, or .) can end a sentence in American English.

Spacing

In English, when a quotation follows other writing on a line of text, a space precedes the opening quotation mark unless the preceding symbol, such as a dash, requires that there be no space. When a quotation is followed by other writing on a line of text, a space follows the closing quotation mark unless it is immediately followed by other punctuation within the sentence, such as a colon or closing punctuation. These exceptions are ignored by some Asian computer systems that systematically display quotation marks with the included spacing.

In Chinese, the spacing is irrelevant since all characters, including punctuation, are the same width.

There is generally no space between an opening quotation mark and the following word, or a closing quotation mark and the preceding word. When a double quotation mark or a single quotation mark immediately follows the other, proper spacing for legibility requires that a (non-breaking) space be inserted.

So Dave actually said, “He said, ‘Good morning?’ ”
Yes, he did say, “He said, ‘Good morning.’ ”

In English, opening quotation marks never appear at the end of a line of text, and closing quotation marks never appear at the beginning. As with most punctuation, these marks are wrapped around with the associated word.

Non-language related usage

Straight quotes (or italic straight quotes) are often used to approximate the prime and double prime (e.g., when signifying inches and feet, or arcminutes and arcseconds). For instance, 5 feet and 6 inches is often written 5' 6", and 40 degrees, 20 minutes, and 50 seconds is written 40° 20' 50". When available, however, the prime should be used instead (e.g., 5′ 6″, and 40° 20′ 50″). Prime and double prime are not present in most character sets, including ASCII and Latin-1, but are present in Unicode, as characters U+2032 (dec. 8242) and U+2033 (dec. 8243), and as HTML entities &prime; and &Prime;.

Straight single and double quotes are used in most programming languages to delimit strings or literal characters. In some languages (e.g. Pascal) only one type is allowed, in some (e.g. C and its derivatives) both are used with different meanings and in others (e.g. Python) both are used interchangeably. In many languages if it is desired to include inside a string the same quotes used to delimit the string the quotes are doubled. For example to represent the string eat 'hot' dogs in Pascal you use 'eat ''hot'' dogs'.

Glyphs

A list of glyphs used as quotation marks and their Unicode (and HTML) values and names follows. The Unicode standard defines two general character categories, “Ps” (punctuation quote start) and “Pe” (punctuation quote end), for all quotation mark characters. (Warning: Some of these glyphs may not display properly in older browsers, which may substitute other sorts or a square.)

Typewriter quotation marks

"Ambidextrous" quotation marks were introduced on typewriters to reduce the number of keys on the keyboard, and were inherited by computer keyboards and character sets. However, modern word processors have started to convert text to use curved quotes (see below). Some computer systems designed in the past had proper opening and closing quotes, with a few machines even making a distinction between regular apostrophes (e.g. couldn’t) and apostrophes that show possession (e.g. Dave’s car). However, the standard ASCII character set, which has been used on a wide variety of computers since the 1960s, only made three quotation marks available: ", ', and the dubious backquote ` (also referred to as a backtick and a letterless grave accent). The Unicode standard includes typographic and a variety of international quotation marks.

Samples Unicode (decimal) HTML and XML Description
'O' U+0027 (39) &apos; in XML, but usually '.

&apos; is not part of the HTML specification.

Apostrophe (single quote)
"O" U+0022 (34) &quot;, but usually " Straight quotation mark (double quote)

Many systems, like the personal computers of the 1980s and early '90s, actually drew straight quotes like curved closing quotes on-screen and in printouts, so text would appear like this (approximately):

”Good morning, Dave,” said HAL.
’Good morning, Dave,’ said HAL.

The grave accent (`) could then be used to supply single quote marks. This use resulted in fonts with an open quote glyph at the grave accent position. This gives a proper appearance at the cost of semantic correctness. Nothing similar was available for the double-quote, so many people resorted to using sets of two single quotes for punctuation, which would look like the following:

``Good morning, Dave,” said HAL.
`Good morning, Dave,’ said HAL.

However, the appearance of these characters has varied greatly from font to font. On systems which provide straight quotes and grave accents the appearance is poor. Unicode specifies that ASCII single and double quotes should be vertical rather than angled, which means if such tricks are used with a font that follows the rules the result will look rather messy (see next sample). On the other hand Unicode also provides the ability to do angled quotes properly.

“Good morning, Dave,” said HAL.
‘Good morning, Dave,’ said HAL.

Quotation marks in English

English curved quotes, also called “book quotes” or “curly quotes”, look like small figures six and nine with the counters filled. They are preferred in formal writing and printed typography. In e-mail and on Usenet they can only be used by using a MIME type with a character set outside of the ISO-8859 series such as a Unicode encoding or one of the Windows-125x series. While not a problem for most modern mail clients this does increase the size of the message and makes the raw message text harder to follow and so some believe it is bad practice (in much the same way that some think that HTML e-mail is a bad thing). A few mail clients send curved quotes using the windows-1252 codes but mark the text as ISO-8859-1 causing problems for decoders that do not make the dubious assumption that C1 control codes in ISO-8859-1 text were meant to be windows-1252 printable characters.

Curved and straight quotes are also sometimes referred to as “smart quotes” and "dumb quotes" respectively; these names are in reference to the name of a function found in word processors like Microsoft Word that automatically converts straight quotes typed by the user into curved quotes. This function is necessary because keyboards lack separate quotation marks, due to the fact the ASCII character set didn't have distinct opening and closing quotation marks. A quote followed by a letter generally becomes an opening quote, whereas a quote with a letter or period (full stop) preceding it and a space after it becomes a closing quote. This function is usually referred to as "educating quotes".

Samples Unicode (decimal) HTML Description
‘O’ U+2018 (8216), U+2019 (8217) &lsquo; &rsquo; Single quotes (left and right)
“O” U+201C (8220), U+201D (8221) &ldquo; &rdquo; Double quotes (left and right)

Variants of and are:

– U+201B (HTML: &#8219;) – single high-reversed-9, or single reversed comma, quotation mark (This is sometimes used to show dropped sounds at the end of words, such as goin‛ instead of using goin‘, goin’, goin`, or goin')
– U+201F (HTML: &#8223;) – double high-reversed-9, or double reversed comma, quotation mark

Supporting curved quotes has been a problem in information technology, primarily because the widely-used ASCII character set did not include a representation for them (as discussed above).

Word processors have traditionally offered curved quotes to users, because in printed documents curved quotes are preferred to straight ones. Before Unicode was widely accepted and supported, this meant representing the curved quotes in whatever 8-bit encoding the software and underlying operating system were using — but the character sets for Windows and Macintosh used two different pairs of values for curved quotes, and ISO 8859-1 (typically the default character set for the Unices and Linux) had no curved quotes, making cross-platform compatibility a nightmare.

Compounding the problem is the “smart quotes” feature mentioned above, which some word processors (including Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org) use by default. With this feature turned on, users may not have realised that the ASCII-compatible straight quotes they were typing on their keyboards ended up as something entirely different.

Unicode support has since become the norm for operating systems. Thus, in at least some cases, transferring content containing curved quotes (or any other non-ASCII characters) from a word processor to another application or platform has sometimes been less troublesome, provided all steps in the process (including the clipboard if applicable) are Unicode-aware. But there are many applications which still use the older character sets, or output data using them, and thus problems still occur.

There are other considerations for including curved quotes in the widely used markup languages HTML, XML, and SGML. If the encoding of the document supports direct representation of the characters, they can be used, but doing so can result in difficulties if the document needs to be edited by someone who is using an editor that cannot support the encoding. For example, many simple text editors only handle a few encodings or assume that the encoding of any file opened is a platform default, so the quote characters may appear as "garbage". HTML includes a set of entities for curved quotes &lsquo; (left single), &rsquo; (right single), &sbquo; (low 9 single), &ldquo; (left double) &rdquo; (right double) &dbquo; (low 9 double). XML does not define these by default, but specifications based on it can do so, and XHTML does. In addition, while the HTML 4, XHTML and XML specifications allow specifying numeric character references in either hexadecimal or decimal, SGML and older versions of HTML (and many old implementations) only support decimal references. Thus, to represent curly quotes in XML and SGML, it is safest to use the decimal numeric character references. That is, to represent the double curly quotes use &#8220; and &#8221;, and to represent single curly quotes use &#8216; and &#8217;. In HTML, it is safest to use the named entity references (&ldquo;, etc.), although decimal numeric character references are processible by most web browsers (Netscape 4 being a notable exception).

There has been some argument in recent years about the appropriateness of book quotes, since they are perceived by some as distracting. Editors who are against book quotes generally argue for ASCII-style straight quotes.

Quotation marks in Finnish and Swedish

In Finnish and Swedish, right quotes are used to mark both the beginning and the end of a quote. Double right-pointing angular quotes, »…», can also be used.

At least in Swedish, an en-dash can also be used to start a quotation. It should then be first on a line and be indented as the first line of a paragraph.

Samples Unicode (decimal) HTML Description
’O’ U+2019 (8217), U+2019 (8217) &rsquo; &rsquo; Single quotes in Swedish and Finnish
”O” U+201D (8221), U+201D (8221) &#8221; &#8221; Double quotes in Swedish and Finnish
– O U+2013 (8211) &ndash; En-dash in Swedish

Quotation marks in Germany and Austria

What is the “left quote” in English is used as the right quote in Germany and Austria, and a different “low 9 quote” is used for the left instead:

Samples Unicode (decimal) HTML Description
‚O‘ U+201A (8218), U+2018 (8216) &sbquo; &lsquo; German single quotes (left and right)
„O“ U+201E (8222), U+201C (8220) &bdquo; &ldquo; German double quotes (left and right)

This style of quoting is also used in Georgian, Estonian, Icelandic, Bulgarian (the single quotes are not used), Romanian and in Russian.

Sometimes, especially in books, the angle quotation marks (see below) are used in Germany and Austria, albeit in reversed order: »O«. In Switzerland, however, the same quotation marks as in French are used: «O».

Quotation marks in Polish

In the Polish language, double angle quotes are used inside of standard Polish double quotes.

Samples Unicode (decimal) HTML Description
‚O’ U+201A (8218), U+2019 (8217) &sbquo; &rsquo; Polish single quotes (left and right)
„O” U+201E (8222), U+201d (8221) &bdquo; &rdquo; Polish double quotes (left and right)

According to current PN-83/P-55366 standard from 1983, Setting rules from composing of Polish texts (Zasady składania tekstów w języku polskim) one can use either „ordinary Polish quotes” or «French quotes» (without space) for first level, and ‚single Polish quotes’ or «French quotes» for second level, which makes three styles of nested quotes:

  1. „Quote ‚inside’ quote”
  2. „Quote «inside» quote”
  3. «Quote ‚inside’ quote»

There is no space on the internal side of quote marks, with the exception of ¼ firet (~ ¼ em) space between two quotation marks when there are no other characters between them (e.g., „quote ‚inside’ ”).

The above rules have not changed since at least the previous BN-76/7440-02 standard from 1976 and are probably much older.

In Polish books and publications, the second style is used almost exclusively. In addition to being standard for second level quotes, French quotes are sometimes used as first level quotes in headings and titles but almost never in ordinary text in paragraphs.

Angled quotation marks in various European languages

Some languages, such as French, Spanish, Catalan or Italian, use angle quotation marks (chevrons or guillemets or duck-foot quotes) and add a quarter-em space (officially) (U+2005, &#8197;) within the quotes. However, virtually all countries that have this rule now use the non-breaking space, because the difference between a non-breaking space and a four-per-em is virtually imperceptible, and the quarter-em is virtually always omitted in non-Unicode fonts. Even more commonly, people just put a normal space between the quotation marks because the non-break is not accessible through their keyboard layout.

« Voulez-vous un sandwich, Henri ? »
“Would you like a sandwich, Henri?”

There is no such space in other languages, e.g. Polish, Russian or in German, French and Italian Switzerland:

«To jest cytat.»
«Это цитата».
“This is a quote.”
Samples Unicode (decimal) HTML Description
‹ O › U+2039 (8249), U+203A (8250) &lsaquo; &rsaquo; French single angle quotes (left and right)
« O » U+00AB (171), U+00BB (187) &laquo; &raquo; French double angle quotes (left and right)
«O» U+00AB (171), U+00BB (187) &laquo; &raquo; non-French double angle quotes (left and right) without space

French

Unlike English, French does not set off unquoted material within a quotation mark by using a second set of quotes. Compare:

“This is a great day for Montrealers,” the minister said. “These investments will permit economic growth.”
« C’est une belle journée pour les Montréalais, soutient le ministre. Ces investissements stimuleront la croissance économique. »

For clarity, some newspapers put the quoted material in italics:

Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)

The use of English quotation marks is increasing in French, and usually follows English rules. English quotes are also used for nested quotations, though single guillemets may also be used for nesting (but very rarely):

« Son ‹ explication › n’est qu’un mensonge », s’indigna le député.
“His ‘explanation’ is just a lie,” the deputy protested.

Spanish

Spanish uses angled quotation marks (comillas) as well, but always without the spaces.

«Esto es un ejemplo de cómo se suele hacer una cita literal en español.»
"This is an example of how one usually writes a literal quotation in Spanish."

And, when quotations are nested in more levels than inner and outer quotation, the system is:

«Esto es un “ejemplo de ‘cómo’ se suele ‘hacer’ una cita literal” en español.»

But, like in French, the use of English quotation marks is increasing in Spanish, and the El País style guide, which is widely followed in Spain, recommends them. When inverted commas are used, they usually follow English rules--that is, punctuation is placed inside quote marks only when such a mark is consistent with the quoted material.

Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian

In Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, angled quotation marks are used without spaces. Quoted material inside a quotation is usually set off with the same quotation marks, and if inner and outer quotation marks fall together, one of them is omitted:

«Я слышал, что Вася говорил: «Дураки они!»
‘I heard that Vasya said: “Idiots, all of them!”’

However, style manuals recommend to use different kinds of quotation marks in such cases (cf. Služba russkogo jazyka, No. 62, 15 July 2003):

«Я слышал, что Вася говорил: „Дураки они!“»
‘I heard that Vasya said: “Idiots, all of them!”’

Dutch and German

Although in general not common in Dutch any more, double angle quotation marks are still used in Dutch government publications.

Double angle quotation marks without spaces are the standard for German printed texts in Switzerland:

Andreas’ Mutter fragte mich: «Hast du den Artikel ‹EU-Erweiterung› gelesen?»
Andrew’s mother asked me: ‘Have you read the article “EU Enlargement”?’

Sometimes, angle quotation marks are also used in German publications from Germany and Austria, especially in novels, but then exactly reversed and without spacing:

Andreas’ Mutter fragte mich: »Hast du den Artikel ›EU-Erweiterung‹ gelesen?«
Andrew’s mother asked me: ‘Have you read the article “EU Enlargement”?’

Quotation dash

Another typographical style, is to omit quotation marks for lines of dialogue, replacing them with an initial dash:

― Je m’ennuie tellement, dit-elle.
― Cela n’est pas de ma faute, retorqua-t-il.
“I’m so bored,” she said.
“That’s not my fault,” he shot back.

This style is particularly common in French, Italian, Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Georgian, Romanian and Hungarian publications. James Joyce always insisted on this style, although his publishers did not always respect his preference. Alan Paton used this style in Cry, the Beloved Country (and no quotation marks at all in some of his later work).

Sometimes (always in Polish, Bulgarian, Georgian and Hungarian) a second dash is used to indicate the end of the quoted speech:

― Ай, ай, ай! ― вскрикнул Левин. ― Я ведь, кажется, уже лет девять не говел. Я и не подумал.
― Хорош! ― смеясь, сказал Степан Аркадевич, ― а меня же называешь нигилистом! Однако ведь это нельзя. Тебе надо говеть.
“Oh dear!” exclaimed Levin. “I think it is nine years since I went to communion! I haven’t thought about it.”
“You are a good one!” remarked Oblonsky, laughing. “And you call me a Nihilist! But it won’t do, you know; you must confess and receive the sacrament.”
from Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (Louise and Aylmer Maude translation)

According to the Unicode standard, U+2015 HORIZONTAL BAR should be used as a quotation dash. In general it is the same length as an em-dash, and so this is often used instead. Both are displayed in the table below.

Samples Unicode (decimal) HTML Description
― O U+2015 (8213) &#8213; Quotation dash, also known as horizontal bar
— O U+2014 (8212) &mdash; Em-dash, an alternative to the quotation dash

Corner brackets in East Asian languages

Corner brackets are well-suited for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages which are written in both vertical and horizontal orientations. China, South Korea, and Japan all use corner brackets when writing vertically, however usages differ when writing horizontally:

White corner brackets are used to mark quote-within-quote segments.

Samples Unicode (decimal) Description
「字」 U+300C (12300), U+300D (12301) Corner brackets

Chinese: 引號 (yǐn hào)
Template:Lang-ja (kagikakko)



U+FE41 (65089), U+FE42 (65090)
『字』 U+300E (12302), U+300F (12303) White corner brackets

Chinese: 雙引號 (shuāng yǐn hào)
Template:Lang-ja (nijū kagikakko)



U+FE43 (65091), U+FE44 (65092)
“한” U+201C (8220), U+201D (8221) English-style quotes Korean (South Korea)
«한» U+00AB (171), U+00BB (187) Angle quotes Korean (North Korea)

Table

Quote signs in several languages
Language Standard Alternative Spacing
primary secondary primary secondary
Afrikaans „…” ‚…’
Albanian «…» ‹…› “…„ ‘…‚
Belarusian «…» „…“
Bulgarian „…“ «…»
Chinese, Simplified “…” ‘…’
Chinese, Traditional 「…」 『…』 “…” ‘…’
Croatian »…« ‘…’ „…“
Czech „…“ ‚…‘ »…« ›…‹
Danish »…« ›…‹ „…“
or ”…”
‚…‘
Dutch „…” ‚…’ “…” ’…’
English, Commonwealth ‘…’ “…” 1–2 pt
English, North American “…” ‘…’ 1–2 pt
Estonian „…“ «…»
Finnish ”…” ’…’ »…» ›…›
French « … » ‹ … › “ … ” ‘ … ’ ¼-em / non-break
French, Swiss «…» ‹…›
German „…“ ‚…‘ »…« ›…‹
German, Swiss «…» ‹…›
Greek «…» ‹…› “…„ ‘…‚ 1 pt
Hungarian „…” »…«
Hebrew “…” «…» “…„
Icelandic „…“
Irish “…” ‘…’ 1–2 pt
Italian «…» “…” ‘…’ 1–2 pt
Italian, Swiss «…» ‹…›
Japanese 「…」 『…』
Latvian «…» „…”
Lithuanian „…“ ‚…‘ «…» ‹…›
Norwegian «…» „…”
Polish „…” ‚…’ «…»
Portuguese “…” ‘…’ «…» ‹…› 0–1 pt
Romanian „…” «…» «…» „…”
Russian «…» „…“
Serbian „…“ ‚…‘ »…« ›…‹
Slovak „…“ ‚…‘ »…« ›…‹
Slovene „…“ ‚…‘ »…« ›…‹
Sorbian „…“ ‚…‘
Spanish «…» "…" “…” ‘…’ 0 pt
Swedish ”…” ’…’ »…» ’…’
Turkish «…» ‹…› “…” ‘…’ 0–1 pt
Ukrainian «…» „…“


For quotations that span multiple paragraphs, besides the opening quotation mark in the first paragraph and the closing quotation mark at the end of the quotation:

Quote signs in several languages
Style Signs Languages
Corner
brackets
『…』 Traditional Chinese, Japanese
「…」 Traditional Chinese, Japanese
Double
quote
„…“ Belarusian, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, German, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Sorbian, Ukrainian
„…” Afrikaans, Dutch, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian
”…” (Danish), Dutch, Finnish, Swedish
“…” Simplified/Traditional Chinese, English, French, Hebrew, Irish, Italian, Korean (South Korea), Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish
“…„ Albanian, Greek, Hebrew
Single
quote
‚…‘ Czech, Danish, German, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Sorbian
‚…’ Afrikaans, Dutch, Polish, Romanian
’…’ Dutch, Finnish, Swedish
‘…’ Simplified/Traditional Chinese, English, French, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish
‘…‚ Albanian, Greek
Double
angled
«…» Albanian, Belarusian, Estonian, French, Swiss (French, German, Italian), Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Korean (North Korea), Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Catalan
»…« Croatian, Czech, Danish, German, Hungarian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene
»…» Finnish, Swedish
Single
angled
‹…› Albanian, French, Swiss (French, German, Italian), Greek, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish
›…‹ Croatian, Czech, Danish, German, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene
›…› Finnish, Swedish

Names for quotation marks

Double quotation mark

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. Part of a tutorial on Java programming on Microsoft Windows. Those parts of this page which would not be ambiguous follow the American rule
  2. ^ Traditional
  3. ^ Quotation dash preferred for dialogue
  4. ^ Rare
  5. ^ These forms are rotated for use in horizontal text; they were originally written ﹁...﹂ and ﹃...﹄ in vertical text
  6. ^ In Switzerland the same style is used for all languages.
  7. Handwriting.
  8. Preferred for headings and other texts in larger font sizes
  9. May substitue for either the opening or closing mark
  10. A closing quotation mark is added to the beginning of each new paragraph.

This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later.

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