3 Ways to Use Quotation Marks

Lesson Transcript

Hi everybody, my name is Alisha. In this lesson, I'm going to talk about three ways to use quotation marks in English.

This lesson is going to cover using quotation marks according to the rules in American English.

Please note that if you're studying British English or if you want to know the rules about British English quotation marks, this lesson is not going to include that as the focus.

But with that in mind, let's get into the first of our three points for this lesson.

So the first point I want to talk about is using quotation marks for dialogue markers.

So when you read a book, for example, and in the story, a character says something, we mark their speech with dialogue marker quotation marks.

So in American English, we use double quotation marks around speech.

So double quotation marks mean we use two of these quotation marks on both sides of the speech. So here's an example of what this looks like. In this sentence, Sarah said, "I like your shirt."

In this sentence, this part here, "I like your shirt," this is directly exactly the content of Sarah's statement. This is exactly what she said. So we mark that speech with a quotation mark, a double quotation mark at the beginning, and a double quotation mark at the end. This shows us it's dialogue. Sarah said, "I like your shirt." This is exactly what she said.

Let's look at the second example.

So sometimes we have the quote at the beginning of the sentence. As in, "That movie was awesome," he exclaimed. "That movie was awesome," he exclaimed. So in this case, that movie was awesome. This is the direct speech. This is exactly what he said. So we mark it with double quotation marks at the beginning and double quotation marks at the end.

You'll also notice in American English the rule is to put the punctuation inside the quotation marks if it's part of the speech here.

So in this sentence we have the period inside the quotation marks, which means the order here is period, quotation mark.

Not quotation mark, then period here.

And the same thing here.

That movie was awesome.

So exclamation point and then quotation mark.

So we have these two ways of showing direct speech, like you see in a book or maybe in an article, perhaps.

We also have another way of showing direct speech, like in news articles and other kinds of reports, where we don't use this kind of he said, she said type pattern.

We do this sometimes when we need to introduce information and we want to include direct speech from someone else.

So let's take a look at what this looks like.

According to our manager, employees have to request time off at least one week in advance.

So in this sentence, at least one week is in double quotation marks.

This shows this is a direct quote from the manager.

So this sentence begins with according to our manager, which shows this information comes from our manager.

And so the direct information is shown with these double quotation marks.

So in this way, we use this to show direct speech, yes, but we don't need to follow this kind of he said she said pattern.

Also notice when you do this, you don't need to include like a comma before the quotation here.

You can just include the direct quote inside those quotation marks.

So these are very, very common ways that we use quotation marks.

But I want to include a couple of key points for expansion here.

The first is in this red part.

We do not use these for reported speech.

So what do I mean by that? Let's look at this example.

Sarah said she liked my shirt.

We do not use quotation marks here.

Sarah said she liked my shirt.

Why? Because Sarah did not say she liked my shirt.

That's not Sarah's words.

was not exactly what Sarah said.

Sarah said, "I like your shirt." Right? In this sentence, we're just reporting something Sarah said.

We are not using her exact words.

When you use someone's exact words, you use the quotation marks.

If you're just reporting the speech, you do not use them.

So please keep this one in mind.

Okay, the next part that I want to talk about is single quotation marks.

So in American English, we use single quotation marks, which means just one quotation mark, inside the double marks for a quote inside a quote.

So this doesn't happen a lot, but sometimes every once in a while, we need to say two things.

We need to talk about two different speech-like points.

So what does this look like? For example, my favorite part of the movie was when Arnold said, "I'll be back," said my friend.

So in this case, we have kind of two speech points happening at the same time, right? My friend is talking about the movie that they just saw and my friend wants to describe their favorite part where a character said something, right? So the double quotation marks are my friend's words, my favorite part of the movie was when Arnold said, and then we have in this case Arnold, the character in the movie, this person's quote in single quotation marks, I'll be back.

And then we end it with a single quotation mark.

In this case, this is the end of the sentence, my friend's sentence also.

So we conclude with double quotation marks again.

So this shows us that two quotes are happening at the same time, or there's a quote inside another quote.

We do this with single and double quotation marks.

And again, this is the American English rule.

So if you study British English or are using the British English editing system, please note that this will be different.

Okay, so with this in mind, let's move on to point number two.

So the second point I want to talk about in this lesson is using quotation marks for titles of short works.

So when I say short works, I mean we use quotation marks around short small works of art or media.

So what do we mean when we say short media? Like, what does that mean? For example, TV episodes or articles, poems, songs, book chapters.

So a really good rule that you can use or a really good guide that you can use to help you understand, should I use quotation marks or not, is to remember these small things are like parts of something bigger.

So for example, a TV episode is one episode of a TV show.

Or for example, a song is one song on an artist's album.

So think of these things as kind of the smaller part of a bigger work.

A book chapter is one part of a book, right? So when you're talking about these small works of art or these small kind of pieces of media, you use quotation marks around those.

So let's look at some examples of how we do this.

First one, Beyonce's song "Single Ladies" was a huge hit.

So in this case, the song is "Single Ladies" and we put this in double quotation marks.

So this is a song title.

If we wanted to include the album, we could include the album in italics, which is a different font.

Okay? Let's look at the second example here.

This is a TV show example.

So in the "Winterfell" episode of the TV show Game of Thrones, the audience meets many of the characters.

So in this example sentence, we have the TV episode title.

So the name of that episode of the TV show is in quotation marks.

This is the title of the episode.

In this sentence, I also included the title of the TV show.

So this is italic text or italicized text.

So it's text that's a little bit at a slant, it's a little bit tilted.

So we use this to describe or to express the TV show title.

So this is how we show kind of the hierarchy, how we show which is the big work and which is the small work.

So the big thing is in italics, the small thing is in double quotation marks.

Okay? Let's look at our last example here.

Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" is a famous poem.

So here I have the author Edgar Allen Poe.

So Edgar Allen Poe's, double quotation mark shows the name of the poem starts, the Raven, end quotation mark, is a famous poem.

So again, we're using this to refer to these short works.

If it's a big work, use these italicized characters to show that, OK? Great.

So as you can see, these two are very, very different.

But it's important to know when you should use which, right? All right, last but not least, the third one that I want to talk about is something that is very, very often misunderstood or not used appropriately.

So this third use is something that's called scare quotes.

Scare quotes.

So this doesn't mean that the information inside the quotes is scary or something like that.

Instead, we use scare quotes to show that something is being used in a different or an unusual or maybe the wrong way.

So a scare quote is the use of quotation marks around a word or phrase to show that the word or phrase is being used in a strange, atypical, false, or inaccurate way.

So when we want to show that we recognize we're using a word or we're using a phrase that has kind of a different meaning or maybe a false meaning, or it's just kind of unusual, we may put quotes around it.

And these are called scare quotes.

A lot of people ask too about this motion.

I've made this motion a few times in today's episode when I'm talking about the different types and the different uses of quotation marks.

But generally in everyday conversation, when people do this as they're talking, they're trying to show this use.

They're trying to express that they're using a word or a phrase in an unusual way.

So let's take a look at some examples.

What does this look like? What does this mean? Here's a very, very basic one.

My "friend" didn't invite me to her birthday party.

So in this sentence, we have friend in these scare quotes.

So what does this mean? How do we understand this? The sentence is grammatically correct, right? We can understand the sentence, my friend didn't invite me to her birthday party.

So the speaker used these scare quotes to show that they feel that this is not kind of usual behavior for a friend.

Usually if you are friends with someone, good friends with someone, they will invite you to their birthday party, right? So these are kind of basic friendship sorts of things.

This person wants to show, "Well, maybe this person isn't my friend."

So they do that with scare quotes.

They show, "Okay, well, maybe this person "isn't actually my friend." Or, "I want to highlight, I want to show in some way "that this person did something that's not normal for a friend." So they do that with scare quotes.

And in speech, when we want to do this, we use this gesture.

my "friend" didn't invite me.

That's how we can communicate that.

We also do that with our voice too, to show that kind of feeling.

Okay, another example here.

The "amazing" meal we had last night made us sick.

So again, grammatically correct, we're talking about a great meal that we had, but the problem here is the meal made the speaker or the writer sick afterwards.

So they want to express that maybe the meal wasn't really so amazing.

Like maybe they were excited about the restaurant or maybe the staff told them that this food was so delicious or something like that.

But in the end, it made them sick.

So they're kind of showing a little bit of a joke in a certain sense or they're kind of showing that the amazing meal or the thing that was supposed to be amazing actually wasn't so amazing because it made them sick.

So we can do that with scare quotes.

Okay, last example of this is with a phrase.

So our "luxury hotel" didn't change the towels in the bathroom.

So in this sentence, we're talking about something, a location that is supposed to be luxurious, right? Which means great customer service, everything is very clean,

everything is prepared carefully and so on, right? But in this case, they're saying,

Our luxury hotel, they didn't change the towels in the bathroom.

So that's a very basic service for hotel guests, right? So that makes it sound like it's not really a luxury hotel, right? This is not something you can expect usually from a luxury hotel.

So the speaker wants to express that.

They can do it with these scare quotes to show, hmm, this is probably not true.

Maybe this hotel isn't really a luxury hotel.

So this is how we use scare quotes, and this is how we do it in speech too, when we're not reading.

We use scare quotes like this to show that we're kind of being sarcastic or we're trying to highlight that we're using a word or we're using a phrase in a different way, okay? Great, so those are three very, very common ways that we use quotation marks in American English.

Please do remember, again, these are rules that are applied in American English writing.

British English does use a different system, but it's important to know the difference between them, and it's important to have a guideline for your text as well.

So I hope that this lesson was helpful for you and you were able to understand some maybe new ways of using quotation marks in English.

Of course, if you have any questions or comments, or if you want to practice making some example sentences with this information, please make sure to do so in the comment section of this video.

Thanks very much for watching this lesson, and I will see you again soon. Bye!

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