Quotation marks, also called quotes, speech marks 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.[1]
They have a variety of forms in different languages and in different media, as can be seen in the table below. English usage is included for the purposes of comparison; for more detailed information on quotation marks in English, see the article Quotation marks.
Contents[hide] |
For particular quote glyph information, see Quotation mark glyphs.
Language | Standard | Alternative | Spacing | Names, references | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Primary | Secondary | Primary | Secondary | |||||
Afrikaans | “…” | ‘…’ | „…” | ‚…’ | [2] | Aanhalingstekens | ||
Albanian | „…“ | ‘…’ | Thonjëza | |||||
Azerbaijani | «…» | ‹…› | “…” | ‘…’ | ||||
Basque | «…» | ‹…› | Komatxoak | |||||
Belarusian | «…» | „…“ | Двукоссі ("double commas"), лапкі ("little paws") | |||||
Bulgarian[3] | „…“ | «…» | [4] | Кавички | ||||
Catalan[3] | «…» | “…” | [5] | “…” | ‘…’ | 0 pt | Cometes franceses (« »), cometes angleses (“ ”), cometes simples (‘ ’). ‹ and › are never used. | |
Chinese, simplified | “…” | ‘…’ | ﹃ ︰ ﹄ |
﹁ ︰ ﹂ |
[6] | Fullwidth form | “…” Simplified Chinese 双引号 (double quotation mark, pinyin: shuāng yǐn hào), ‘…’ simplified Chinese 单引号 (single quotation mark, pinyin: dān yǐn hào) GB/T 15834:1995 | |
Chinese, traditional | 「…」 | 『…』 | [7] | “…” | ‘…’ | 引號 (yǐn hào) 國語文教育叢書第三 | ||
Croatian | „…” | ‚…’ | »…« | Navodnici „…” and »…« (latter not used in handwriting, only press & print); polunavodnici ‚…’ | ||||
Czech | „…“ | ‚…‘ | »…« | ›…‹ | Uvozovka (singular), uvozovky (plural) (cf. uvozovat = "to introduce") | |||
Danish | »…« | ›…‹ | „…“ or “…” |
‚…‘ | Citationstegn ("citation marks"), anførselstegn, gåseøjne ("goose eyes") | |||
Dutch | “…” | ‘…’ | „…” | ‚…’ | Aanhalingstekens ("citation marks") | |||
English, UK | ‘…’ or “…” | “…” or ‘…’ | [8] | 1–2 pt | Quotation mark, double quote, quote, dirk, double mark, literal mark, double-glitch, inverted commas, speech mark; (INTERCAL: rabbit-ears; ITU-T: dieresis, quotation mark) | |||
English, US | “…” | ‘…’ | [8] | 1–2 pt | See above | |||
Esperanto | “…” | ‘…’ | [9] | Citiloj | ||||
Estonian | „…“ | «…» | Jutumärgid ("speech marks") | |||||
Filipino | “…” | ‘…’ | [8][10] | Panipi | ||||
Finnish | ”…” | ’…’ | »…» | ’…’ | [11] | Lainausmerkki ("citation mark", singular), lainausmerkit (plural) | ||
French[3] | « … » | « … » or “…”[12] | [4] | “ … ” | ‘ … ’ | ¼-em / non-break | Guillemets | |
French, Swiss[13] | «…» | ‹…› | See above | |||||
Georgian | „…“ | “…” | 0 pt | ბრჭყალები (brč’q’alebi "claws") | ||||
German | „…“ | ‚…‘ | »…« | ›…‹ | Anführungszeichen, Gänsefüßchen ("little goose feet"), Hochkommas/Hochkommata ("high commas") | |||
German, Swiss[13] | «…» | ‹…› | See above | |||||
Greek[3][5] | «…» | “…” | [14][15] | 1 pt | Εισαγωγικά ("introductory marks") | |||
Hebrew | „…” | ‚…’ | [16] | "…" | '…' | The direction of text is right-to-left, so the low quotation marks are opening. The marks are called merkha'ot (מֵירְכָאוֹת; plural of merkha מֵירְכָא). A similar punctuation mark unique to Hebrew is called gershayim (גרשיים), but its standard usage is different. | ||
Hungarian[3] | „…” | »…« | Macskaköröm ("cat claws"), idézőjel ("quotation mark" = „ ”), lúdláb ("goose feet"), hegyével befelé forduló jelpár (» «) | |||||
Icelandic | „…“ | ‚…‘ | Gæsalappir ("goose feet") | |||||
Indonesian | “…” | ‘…’ | Tanda kutip, tanda petik | |||||
Interlingua | Virgulettas | |||||||
Irish | “…” | ‘…’ | 1–2 pt | Liamóg (from "William", see Guillemets) | ||||
Italian[3] | «…» | “…” | ‘…’ | 1–2 pt | Virgolette | |||
Italian, Swiss[13] | «…» | ‹…› | See above | |||||
Japanese | 「…」 | 『…』 | [7] | かぎ括弧 (kagi kakko, ‘hook bracket’), 二重かぎ括弧 (nijū kagi kakko, ‘double hook bracket’) | ||||
Korean | “…” | ‘…’ | 『…』 | 「…」 | 따옴표(“ttaompyo”) | |||
Latvian | «…» | „…“ | Pēdiņas | |||||
Lithuanian | „…“ | ‚…‘ | «…» | ‹…› | Kabutės | |||
Macedonian[17] | „…“ | ’…‘ | Наводници (primary level, double quote), полунаводници (secondary level, single quote) | |||||
Norwegian | «…» | ’…’ | „…” | ’…’ | [18] | Anførselstegn, gåseauge/gåseøyne ("goose eyes"), hermeteikn/hermetegn, sittatteikn/sitattegn, dobbeltfnutt | ||
Polish[19] | „…” | «…» | [4] | «…» | [20] | Cudzysłów | ||
Portuguese, Brazil[3] | “…” | ‘…’ | Aspas duplas and aspas simples respectively | |||||
Portuguese, Portugal[3] | «…» | “…” | “…” | ‘…’ | Aspas or vírgulas dobradas[21] | |||
Romanian[3] | „…” | «…» | [22] | «…» | „…” | 0 pt | Ghilimele (plural), ghilimea (singular, rarely used) | |
Russian[3] | «…» | „…“ | 0 pt | Кавычки (kavychki, general term); ёлочки (yolochki, "little fir trees": angle quotes); лапки (lapki, "little paws": curly quotes) | ||||
Serbian | „…“ | ’…’ | „…” or »…« | Наводници, знаци навода (cyr.) / Navodnici, znaci navoda (lat.) | ||||
Slovak | „…“ | ‚…‘ | »…« | ›…‹ | Úvodzovka (singular), úvodzovky (plural) (cf. uvádzať = "to introduce") |
|||
Slovene | „…“ | ‚…‘ | »…« | ›…‹ | ||||
Sorbian | „…“ | ‚…‘ | ||||||
Spanish[3] | «…» | “…” | “…” | ‘…’ | [5] | 0 pt | Comillas latinas or comillas angulares (« »), comillas inglesas dobles (“ ”), comillas inglesas simples (‘ ’). ‹ and › are never used in Spanish. | |
Swedish | ”…” | ’…’ | »…» or »…« | ’…’ | [23] | Citationstecken, anföringstecken, citattecken (modernised term), dubbelfnutt (colloquial for ASCII double quote) | ||
Thai | “…” | ‘…’ | อัญประกาศ (anprakat) | |||||
Turkish | “…” | ‘…’ | «…» | ‹…› | 0–1 pt | Tırnak İşareti ("fingernail mark") | ||
Ukrainian | «…» | „…“ | 0 pt | Лапки [plural only] (lapky, "little paws") | ||||
Vietnamese | “…” | Dấu ngoặc kép | ||||||
Welsh | ‘…’ or “…” | “…” or ‘…’ | 1–2 pt | Dyfynodau |
Although not common in Dutch any more, double angle quotation marks are still used in Dutch government publications.
What the “left quote” is in English is used as the right quote in Germany and Austria, and a different “low 9 quote” is used for the left instead. Some fonts, e.g. Verdana, were designed not bearing in mind the automatic use of the English left quote as the German right quote and are therefore typographically incompatible with German.
Samples | Unicode (decimal) | HTML | Description |
---|---|---|---|
‚O‘ | U+201A (8218), U+2018 (8216) | ‚ ‘ | German single quotes (left and right) |
„O“ | U+201E (8222), U+201C (8220) | „ “ | German double quotes (left and right) |
Double quotes are standard for denoting speech in German.
This style of quoting is also used in Bulgarian, Czech, Estonian, Georgian, Icelandic, Russian, Serbian, and in Ukrainian. In Bulgarian, Icelandic, Russian and Ukrainian single quotation marks are not used. The double-quote style was also used in the Netherlands, but is now out of fashion—it is still frequently found on older shop signs, however and is used by some news papers.
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».
Double angle quotation marks without spaces are the standard for German printed texts in Switzerland:
Angle quotation marks are also often used in German publications from Germany and Austria, especially in novels, but then exactly reversed and without spacing:
In Finnish and Swedish, right quotes, ”...”, are used to mark both the beginning and the end of a quote (sometimes called “dum quotes”). Double right-pointing angular quotes, »…», can also be used.
Alternatively, an en-dash followed by a (non-breaking) space can be used to denote the beginning of quoted speech, in which case the end of the quotation is not specifically denoted (see below section “Quotation dash”). A line-break should not be allowed between the en-dash and the first word of the quotation.
Samples | Unicode (decimal) | HTML | Description |
---|---|---|---|
’O’ | U+2019 (8217) | ’ | Secondary level quotation |
”O” | U+201D (8221) | ” | Primary level quotation |
»O» | U+00BB (187) | » | Alternative primary level quotation |
– O | U+2013 (8211) | – | Alternative denotation at the beginning of quoted speech |
French language uses angle quotation marks (guillemets, or duck-foot quotes), adding a quarter-em space (officially) (U+2005 four-per-em space (HTML:  
)) within the quotes. However, many people now use the non-breaking space, because the difference between a non-breaking space and a four-per-em is virtually imperceptible (but also because the Unicode quarter-em space is breakable), and the quarter-em is virtually always omitted in non-Unicode fonts. Even more commonly, people just put a normal (breaking) space between the quotation marks because the non-breaking space is often not easily accessible from the keyboard.
Sometimes, for instance on the French news site Le Figaro, no space is used around the quotation marks. This parallels normal usage in other languages, e.g. Catalan, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, or in German, French and Italian as written in Switzerland:
Samples | Unicode (decimal) | HTML | Description |
---|---|---|---|
« O » | U+00AB (171), U+00BB (187) | « » | French double angle quotes (left and right), most usual (approximative) form used today on the web, with normal (half-em) non-breaking spaces. |
« O » | French double angle quotes (left and right), more exact form used by typographers, with narrow (quarter-em) non-breaking spaces. | ||
«O» | non-French double angle quotes (left and right) without space (not recommended) | ||
‹ O › | U+2039 (8249), U+203A (8250) | ‹ › | French single angle quotes (left and right), alternate form for embedded quotations, used on the web with normal non-breaking spaces. |
‹ O › | French single angle quotes (left and right), alternate form for embedded quotations, preferably used by typographers with narrow non-breaking spaces. |
Initially, the French guillemet characters were not angle shaped but also used the comma (6/9) shape. They were different from English quotes because they were standing (like today's guillemets) on the baseline (like lowercase letters), and not above it (like apostrophes and English quotation marks) or hanging down from it (like commas). At the beginning of the 19th century, this shape evolved to look like (( small parentheses )). The angle shape appeared later to increase the distinction and avoid confusions with apostrophes, commas and parentheses in handwritten manuscripts submitted to publishers. Unicode currently does not provide alternate codes for these 6/9 guillemets on the baseline, which are still considered as form variants implemented in older French typography (such as the Didot font design). Also there was not necessarily any distinction of shape between the opening and closing guillemets, with both types pointing to the right (like today's French closing guillemets).
Unlike English, French does not set off unquoted material within a quotation mark by using a second set of quotes. They must be used with non-breaking spaces (preferably narrow, if available, i.e. U+202F NNBSP which is missing in most computer fonts but that renderers should be able to render using the same glyph as the breaking "French" thin space U+2009, handling the non-breaking property internally in the text renderer / layout engine, because line-breaking properties are never defined in fonts themselves; such renderers should also be able to infer a half-width space from the glyph assigned to the normal half-em non-breaking space, if the thin space itself is not mapped). Compare:
In many printed books, when quotations are spanning multiple lines of text (including multiple paragraphs), an additional closing quotation sign is traditionally used at the beginning of each line continuing a quotation ; any right-pointing guillemet at the beginning of a line does not close the current quotation; this convention has been consistently used since the beginning of the 19th century by most book printers (and is still in use today). Note that such insertion of continuation quotation marks will also occur if there's a word hyphenation break. Unfortunately, there is still no support for automatic insertion of these continuation guillemets in HTML/CSS and in many word-processors, so these have to be inserted by manual typesetting:
For clarity, some newspapers put the quoted material in italics:
The French Imprimerie nationale (cf. Lexique des règles typographiques en usage à l'Imprimerie nationale, presses de l'Imprimerie nationale, Paris, 2002), though, does not use different quotation marks for nesting:
In this case, when there should be two adjacent opening or closing marks, only one is written:
The use of English quotation marks is increasing in French and usually follows English rules, for instance when the keyboard or the software context doesn't allow the utilisation of guillemets. The French news site Le Monde uses straight quotation marks (however, the printed version of this daily newspaper still uses the French angle-shaped guillemets).
English quotes are also used sometimes for nested quotations:
But the most frequent convention used in printed books for nested quotations is to style them in italics (single quotation marks are much more rarely used, and multiple levels of quotations using the same marks is often considered confusing for readers):
Further, running speech does not use quotation marks beyond the first sentence, as changes in speaker are indicated by a dash, as opposed to the English use of closing and re-opening the quotation. (For other languages employing dashes, see Quotation dash hereafter.) The dashes may be used entirely without quotation marks as well. In general, quotation marks are extended to encompass as much speech as possible, including not just non-spoken text such as "he said" (as previously noted), but also as long as the conversion extends. The quotation marks end at the last spoken text however, not extending to the end of paragraphs when the final part is not spoken.
Greek uses angled quotation marks (εισαγωγικά – eisagogiká):
and the quotation dash (παύλα – pávla):
which translate to:
Samples | Unicode (decimal) | HTML | Description |
---|---|---|---|
«O» | U+00AB (0171), U+00BB (0187) | « » | Greek first level double quotes (εισαγωγικά) |
― O | U+2015 (8213) | — | Greek direct quotation em-dash |
Samples | Unicode (decimal) | HTML | Description |
---|---|---|---|
„O” | U+201E (8222), U+201d (8221) | „ ” | Hungarian first level double quotes (left and right) |
»O« | U+00AB (0187), U+00BB (0171) | » « | Hungarian second level double quotes (left and right) |
’O’ | U+2019 (8217) | ’ | Hungarian unpaired quotes signifying "meaning" |
According to current recommendation by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences the main Hungarian quotation marks are comma-shaped double quotation marks set on the base-line at the beginning of the quote and at apostrophe-height at the end of it for first level, inversed »French quotes« without space (the German tradition) for the second level, so the following nested quotation pattern emerges:
In Hungarian linguistic tradition the meaning of a word is signified by uniform (unpaired) apostrophe-shaped quotation marks:
Quotation dash is also used and is predominant in belletristic literature.
Samples | Unicode (decimal) | HTML | Description |
---|---|---|---|
‚O’ | U+201A (8218), U+2019 (8217) | ‚ ’ | Polish single quotes (left and right) |
„O” | U+201E (8222), U+201d (8221) | „ ” | Polish double quotes (left and right) |
― O | U+2015 (8213) | — | Polish direct quotation em-dash |
– O | U+2013 (8211) | – | Polish direct quotation en-dash |
According to current PN-83/P-55366 standard from 1983, Typesetting rules for composing Polish text (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:
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. ,„ and ’”).
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. The second style is also used in Romanian („Quote «inside» quote”), according to the Romanian Academy rules.
Another style of quoting is to use an em-dash to open a quote; this is used almost exclusively to quote dialogues.
An en-dash is sometimes used in place of the em-dash, especially so in newspaper texts.
In Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, angled quotation marks are used without spaces. In case of quoted material inside a quotation, rules[24] and most of noted style manuals prescribe the use of different kinds of quotation marks. However, some of them[25] allow to use the same quotation marks for quoted material inside a quotation, and if inner and outer quotation marks fall together, then one of them should be omitted.
Right:
Permissible, when it is technically impossible to use different quotation marks:
But preferable ways in such case are:
Spanish uses angled quotation marks (comillas latinas or angulares) as well, but always without the spaces.
And, when quotations are nested in more levels than inner and outer quotation, the system is:[26]
As 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.
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 | Usage |
---|---|---|---|
「文字」 | U+300C (12300), U+300D (12301) | Corner brackets Traditional Chinese: 單引號 (dān yǐn hào) Simplified Chinese: 单引号 Japanese: 鉤括弧 (kagikakko) Korean: 낫표 (natpyo) |
Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese |
﹁ 文 字 ﹂ |
U+FE41 (65089), U+FE42 (65090)[27] | For vertical writing: Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese |
|
『文字』 | U+300E (12302), U+300F (12303) | White corner brackets Traditional Chinese: 雙引號 (shuāng yǐn hào) Simplified Chinese: 双引号 Japanese: 二重鉤括弧 (nijū kagikakko) Korean: 겹낫표 (gyeopnatpyo) |
Japanese, Korean (book titles), Traditional Chinese |
﹃ 文 字 ﹄ |
U+FE43 (65091), U+FE44 (65092)[27] | For vertical writing: Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese |
|
“한” | U+201C (8220), U+201D (8221) | Double quotes Korean: 큰따옴표 (keunttaompyo), Simplified Chinese: 双引号 (shuāng yǐn hào) |
Korean (South Korea), Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese (acceptable but less common, happened in Hong Kong mainly as a result of influence from mainland China) |
‘한’ | U+2018 (8216), U+2019 (8217) | Single quotes Korean: 작은따옴표 (jageunttaompyo), Simplified Chinese: 单引号 (dān yǐn hào) |
Korean (South Korea), Simplified Chinese (for quote-within-quote segments) |
《한》 | U+00AB (171), U+00BB (187) | Double angle quotes Simplified Chinese: 书名号 (shū míng hào) Traditional Chinese: 書名號 |
Korean (North Korea), Chinese (used for titles of books, documents, musical pieces, cinema films, TV programmes, newspapers, magazines, laws, etc. ) |
Another typographical style is to omit quotation marks for lines of dialogue, replacing them with an initial dash:
This style is particularly common in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Greek, Russian, Turkish, Bulgarian, and Esperanto. 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). Charles Frazier used this style for his novel Cold Mountain as well. Details for individual languages are given above.
The dash is often combined with ordinary quotation marks. For example, in French, a guillemet may be used to initiate running speech, with each change in speaker indicated by a dash, and a closing guillemet to mark the end of the quotation.
Dashes are also used in many modern English novels, especially those written in non-standard dialects. Some examples include:
In Italian, Catalan, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Georgian, Romanian, Lithuanian and Hungarian, a second dash is added, if the main sentence continues after the end of the quote:
In Finnish, on the other hand, a second dash is added when the quote continues after a reporting clause:[28]
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 following table.
Samples | Unicode (decimal) | HTML | Description |
---|---|---|---|
― O | U+2015 (8213) | ― | Quotation dash, also known as horizontal bar |
— O | U+2014 (8212) | — | Em-dash, an alternative to the quotation dash |