Quotation marks [ “ ” / ‘ ’ ] are punctuation marks that always work in pairs. They fence a stretch of words off from the rest of the sentence, so the reader knows exactly where those words begin and where they end.
We use quotation marks for a number of reasons:
- to record someone’s exact words
- to mark titles
- to highlight a word being discussed
- to cast doubt on a word, or use it ironically
This page covers each of these functions separately and in detail.
Quotation Marks in Use
- Grandad muttered, “Kids these days.” (direct speech – reporting words first)
- “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said. (direct speech – reporting words after)
- “Wait,” he said. “Is that smoke coming from the kitchen?” (direct speech – reporting words in the middle)
- “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” — Obi-Wan Kenobi [Revenge of the Sith, 2005] (quoting a source)
- The receptionist told me, “The dentist said, ‘The X-rays came back clear,’ and that he’ll see you in six months’ time for a check-up.” (a quote within a quote)
- The landlord called it ‘a small leak’ on the Tuesday. The ceiling came down on the Wednesday. (a partial quotation)
- The whole stadium belted out ‘Wonderwall’ after the final whistle. (title)
- Everyone calls it ‘the Tube.’ Its official name is the London Underground. (a highlighted word or phrase being discussed)
- My brother ‘borrowed’ my charger three months ago. (doubt, sarcasm, and irony)
- Grandad muttered, “Kids these days.” (direct speech – reporting words first)
Quotation Marks and Direct Speech
Direct speech is used to capture someone’s exact words, word for word. Double quotation marks are how we show the reader which words those are.
For example:
- “Practice makes perfect,” he quipped, “or so they keep telling me.”
Here, every word enclosed by quotation marks belongs to someone else other than the writer. This example is split into two parts, ‘Practice makes perfect’ and ‘or so they keep telling me’. Both have been imported from another source, and the quotation marks demarcate exactly what belongs to the writer and what doesn’t.
The words outside the marks ( he quipped ) are what we call reporting words (not to be confused with reported speech) or the reporting clause.
The reporting clause can sit in three places: before the quote, after it, or in the middle of it. Where it sits changes how the sentence is punctuated. We cover each case below.
Reporting Words First
When the reporting clause comes first, a comma follows it and sits just before the opening quotation mark. The quote keeps its own end punctuation inside the closing mark.
Let’s look at an example:
- He conceded, “We should probably ask for directions before we get even more lost.”
Here, the comma after conceded introduces the quote, and the full stop closes it off inside the marks.
Note: It’s increasingly common to see a colon introduce direct speech. For example, as the saying goes: “Actions speak louder than words.” Both a comma and a colon are now widely acceptable ways to introduce a quote. Whichever you choose, the main thing is to keep it consistent.
More examples:
- The sign said, “Beware of the dog, he’s cuter than he looks.”
- The pilot announced, “We’ll be landing shortly in Dubai, where it’s a sunny 34 degrees.”
- From across the marketplace, I heard the vendor shout, “Fresh mangoes, half price, today only!” I couldn’t resist getting two bags.
Reporting Words After
Sometimes, the reporting clause comes after a quoted section instead of before it.
Using the example above again, this is what that looks like in practice:
- “We should probably ask for directions before we get even more lost,” he conceded.
If the quoted section ends in a full stop, as it does here, that full stop is replaced with a comma. It sits inside the closing mark and hands the sentence over to the reporting clause, in this case he conceded.
A question mark or exclamation mark, though, is not replaced with a comma. If the quote ends with one of these marks instead of a full stop, it stays exactly as it is.
Compare:
❌ – “Did anyone check the forecast?,” she asked.
✅ – “Did anyone check the forecast?” she asked.
One piece of end punctuation is always enough. Adding a comma on top would be one mark too many.
More examples:
- “Temperatures could reach record highs this month,” the Met Office has forecast.
- “The shark feeding display will begin at 1pm,” it said on the notification board.
- “Don’t worry, I’ve done this a hundred times,” he said just before slipping into the pond.
Note: The reporting clause is particularly common after the quote in news reporting, official or expert statements, and everyday situations where you’re simply passing on something you’ve read or heard.
Reporting Words in the Middle
The reporting clause can also sit in the middle of a quoted section. As a result, the quoted bits are visually split into two parts.
Placed in the middle instead, our main example looks like this:
- “Practice makes perfect,” he quipped, “or so they keep telling me.”
This is one continuous sentence that has been split into two written halves. Notice what happens at the end of the first quoted segment: a comma sits there, inside the closing mark. The reporting words come next. A second comma then leads back into the reopened quote. The second half continues the same sentence, so or stays lowercase.
A speaker can also finish one sentence and start a new one. When this happens, the second half starts fresh. A full stop follows the reporting words. A capital letter begins the new quote.
For example:
- “I’ve seen that film three times now,” Tim said. “It gets more confusing each time you watch it.”
More examples:
- “Hang on,” she said, “I know a shortcut.”
- “Time flies,” he quipped, “especially when you’re the one running late.”
- “The Sphinx,” the guide said, “is carved from a single piece of limestone.”
Dialogue and Quotation Marks
As we have seen, the placement of reporting clauses in quotation constructions is quite flexible. But what if there is more than one person being quoted?
The good news is not much changes. Each time the speaker changes, we start a new line. This often makes the reporting clause unnecessary once the pattern is set. The quotation marks themselves stay exactly the same.
For example, consider this exchange at a library:
Person A: “Can you turn your headphones down, please?” the librarian asked.
Person B: “Of course I will. Sorry about that,” he said.
Person A: “It’s still quite loud.”
Person B: “Is it? I can barely hear it.”
Person A: “Yes, it is, and it’s not fair on others around you.”
Person B: “Okay, my bad. Sorry.”
Person A: “This is a library, not a disco hall,” she muttered as she walked away.
The first two lines carry a reporting clause, which establishes who’s involved in the conversation. After that, the paragraph breaks alone make it clear who’s saying what.
Notice, though, how the final line brings the reporting clause back. We tend to include a reporting clause anywhere a sentence needs to show more than just who’s speaking, how something was said, or what the speaker was doing. Otherwise, paragraph breaks are enough.
Quoting a Source
Quotation marks aren’t only used to record a live exchange. They can also credit an existing source, something already said or written elsewhere: a film, a speech, a book, or a historical figure. Instead of a reporting clause, we use a citation.
For example:
- “May the Force be with you.” — Han Solo [Star Wars, 1977]
Notice here how we don’t use a reporting clause. There’s no he/she said, and no comma leading in. Instead, an em dash [ — ] introduces the source and tells us who said it, and where it’s from. The quotation marks still fence off the exact words. The citation simply replaces the reporting clause as the way we tell the reader whose words they are
More examples:
- “We were on a break!” — Ross [Friends, 1994]
- “Fine, I’ll do it myself.” — Thanos [Avengers: Infinity War, 2018]
- “Life is like a box of chocolates.” — Forrest Gump [Forrest Gump, 1994]
- “To be, or not to be, that is the question.” — Hamlet [Hamlet, 1600]
- “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” — Laozi [Tao Te Ching, 6th century BC]
- “They may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!” — William Wallace [Braveheart, 1995]
- “Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic.” — Albus Dumbledore [Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, 2007]
- “We are all connected. To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe, atomically.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson [The Universe, 2007]
- “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” — Friedrich Nietzsche [Twilight of the Idols, 1889]
Block Quotations
Every citation in this section so far has sat inline, meaning it sits directly within the surrounding text, rather than being set apart on its own.
However, inline citation only works up to a point. Once the quoted section is long, several sentences, or even a whole paragraph, it doesn’t fit comfortably inside quotation marks, and the passage starts to dominate the page.
This is where the convention changes. We drop the quotation marks and set the passage apart as its own indented block. This is known as a block quotation.
Consider this passage from Darwin’s On the Origin of Species:
He notes:
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.
— Charles Darwin [On the Origin of Species, 1859]
Looking at this example block quote, we can see a few things done differently compared to shorter quotations. Firstly, block quotations get introduced with a colon. Secondly, and as touched upon above, we lose the double quotation marks. Having them here would be like building a fence around a fence. Thirdly, the attribution follows a similar pattern to shorter quotes. We use the em dash [ — ], followed by details such as the author, the source, and sometimes a date or page number.
Direct Speech vs. Reported Speech
There are two ways to relay what someone said. The first is direct speech, where quotation marks mark out the exact words. The second is reported speech (also called indirect speech), where we fold what someone said into our own sentence instead of quoting it directly.
Compare:
- “I climbed Everest when I was younger,” she boasted. (direct speech)
- She boasted that she climbed Everest when she was younger. (reported speech)
Here, three things separate the reported version from the direct one above: the quotation marks are gone, the pronoun has shifted from I to she, and the word that now introduces the reported clause. That isn’t strictly needed. ‘She boasted she climbed Everest’ works just as well, but keeping it in makes it easier to spot where her actual words begin. The verb stays as climbed in both, since when I was younger already fixes the timing. Often, though, the verb has to shift too, as the examples below show.
Put simply, quotation marks tell the reader these are the exact words of someone else. Reported speech retells what was said in the writer’s own words instead.
More examples:
Comparative Examples: Direct Speech vs. Reported Speech
| Direct Speech | Reported Speech |
|---|---|
| “I’ve finished the report,” she said. | She said she’d finished the report. |
| “I’ll fix it tomorrow,” he said, five days ago. | He said he’d fix it tomorrow, five days ago. |
| “This is the hottest sauce we’ve got,” he said. | He said it was the hottest sauce they had. |
A Quote Within a Quote
Quotation marks come in two sets: double [ “ ” ] and single [ ‘ ’ ].
Double marks are used for direct speech. Single marks have several other uses. One such case is a quote within a quote, where double marks are used for the outer quote and single marks for the inner one. This way, the reader can easily tell the two speakers’ words apart.
Let’s look at an example:
- The estate agent told the buyers, “The surveyor said, ‘The roof’s in good condition,’ and that no further work was needed.”
Here, the outer double marks enclose everything the estate agent told the buyers. The inner single marks enclose the exact sentence that the surveyor used, word for word, rather than a paraphrase folded into the estate agent’s own account.
This is what the same sentence looks like if all the quotation marks are the same:
❌ – The estate agent told the buyers, “The surveyor said, “The roof’s in good condition,” and that no further work was needed.”
The reader here is presented with a more confusing picture. It’s harder to gauge who’s saying what. This is why single marks step in for the inner quote to differentiate between the two speakers.
More examples of quote within a quote constructions:
- He told me, “She said, ‘We’re closed,’ and shut the hatch.”
- The mechanic told us, “The dealership said, ‘It’s still under warranty.'”
- The tour guide told us, “The villagers here truly live by the saying, ‘Waste not, want not.'”
Notice that every example follows the same clear and reliable pattern. We use double marks for the outer quote, and single marks for the quote nested inside it.
Partial Quotations
A partial quotation includes only part of what was actually said or written, rather than a complete section of text from the original source.
For example:
- He said that his curry wasn’t ‘that hot’, but his face told another story.
Here, that hot is our partial quote. The writer has specifically and selectively chosen to include this exact phrase from what the person being quoted actually said in full. The rest of the sentence is retold in the writer’s own words.
Partial quotations turn up most often in news reporting, teaching, and academic writing. They let the writer/speaker capture a snippet of someone else’s exact words. Doing so supports conciseness, precision, and evidence for claims.
Note: In the UK, we generally opt for single quotation marks to capture partial quotes. However, many writers use double marks instead; both are correct when it comes to partial quotations. The key thing is consistency. Whichever you choose for partial quotations, use it every time.
A few more, across different contexts:
- The doctor described the results as ‘within normal range’, so that’s a relief.
- His new book argues the Dark Ages were more of ‘a dimming of light, not a blackout’.
- Assisting farmers in getting water to crops will be a ‘priority’ going forward, a government spokesperson has said.
Quotation Marks for Titles
A title takes quotation marks if the work exists inside something bigger. It takes italics if the work stands entirely on its own.
This distinction is perhaps easier to comprehend by thinking about something we are all familiar with: TV series. A series is a standalone, complete thing. Its episodes are not; they exist only within it.
As such, a series takes italics. Its episodes take quotation marks.
Let’s see what this looks like in practice:
- ‘Ozymandias’ is widely regarded as one of the best episodes of television ever made.
Ozymandias is a single episode, one part of a much bigger series. It doesn’t stand on its own, so we use quotation marks if we want to mention it in text.
A work that stands entirely on its own follows the same logic, just with italics instead.
- Breaking Bad is often cited as one of the greatest television dramas ever made.
Breaking Bad is the series to which the episode ‘Ozymandias’ belongs. It’s a complete, standalone work, so we use italics if we want to refer to it in text.
A few more examples, each pairing a contained work with the larger work it belongs to:
- My favourite episode of Friends is ‘The One Where No One’s Ready’.
- ‘Lose Yourself’, from the soundtrack to 8 Mile, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, the first rap song ever to win it.
- ‘Horatius’, the first poem in Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome, tells the story of a Roman soldier who held a bridge single-handedly against an invading army.
Italics and Quotation Marks for Titles Across Different Contexts
| Italics | Example | Quotation Marks | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Books | Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone | Chapter | ‘The Boy Who Lived’ |
| Music Albums | The Stone Roses | Song | ‘Waterfall’ |
| TV Series | The 100 | Episode | ‘Sanctum’ |
| Poetry Collection | Lays of Ancient Rome | Poem | ‘Horatius’ |
| Newspapers / Magazines | The Guardian | Article | ‘How to Grow Tomatoes at Home’ |
| Film | Inception | * | * |
| Video Games | Final Fantasy VIII | * | * |
* Films and video games are usually treated as complete works in their own right, even when part of a trilogy, franchise, or series. However, a small number use named chapters or episodes. In such cases, those titles would take quotation marks, the same as any other work that exists inside something bigger.
Note: In the UK, we generally opt for single quotation marks for titles. This is a style choice, not a fixed rule. Double marks are equally acceptable, and many writers choose them instead. What matters most is consistency. Whichever mark you choose, use it every time.
Quotation Marks for Highlighted Words
Quotation marks are used in writing whenever we need to refer to a specific word or phrase. This is particularly useful when we need to do things such as clarify a spelling, settle a mix-up between two or more words/things, or point out exactly what a word means.
For example:
- ‘Its’ shows possession, while ‘it’s’ is short for ‘it is’.
This sentence compares two related forms, a possessive (its) and a contraction (it’s), and names the full phrase it comes from (it is).
The quotation marks work in this way much like holding something up to say “look at this.” The quoted blocks, ‘its’ and ‘it’s’, are the objects under discussion. They are being highlighted here for the purpose of comparison.
More examples:
- ‘Ubiquitous’ means to be seemingly present everywhere.
- ‘Bookkeeper’ has three double letters in a row.
- ‘Affect’ is usually a verb, and ‘effect’ is usually a noun.
- ‘Queue’ is just the letter ‘Q’ followed by four silent letters.
Note: Many writers use italics to highlight words instead of quotation marks (e.g., the word delicious has three syllables). Whichever style you choose, the key thing is to be consistent.
Quotation Marks for Doubt, Sarcasm, and Irony
Interestingly, quotation marks can also be used to express doubt, sarcasm, or irony. In each case, the marks enclose a word or phrase to show a mismatch between what’s literally being said and the reality of the situation as the speaker perceives it.
For example:
- My brother ‘borrowed’ my charger three months ago.
Here, the quoted word borrowed doesn’t match what actually happened. Three months on and there’s still no sign of the charger coming back, so borrowed doesn’t reflect the reality of the situation. The quotation marks flag that mismatch.
More examples:
- He’s off work with a ‘bad back’ again.
- Oh yeah, Chandler ‘let’ me win. — Ross Geller [Friends, 1994]
- He said he was ‘working from home’, but on the group call we heard someone knocking and calling out ‘Room service!’ in the background.