FOR EDITORS, PROOFREADERS AND WRITERS

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise chat about 4 features of written language that are often thought to be Americanisms but aren’t!

​Click to listen to Season 3, Episode 3

​Find out more about ...

• -iz- spellings
• serial commas
• em dashes
• which/that in restrictive relative clauses

Mentioned in the show

• Lexico/Oxford: ‘The Differences Between British and American Terms’
• Lynne Murphy on British and American English (video)
• Free PDF booklet

​Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

In this episode of The Editing Podcast, Denise and Louise talk with linguist Rob Drummond about grammar pedantry, peevery, youth language, and non-standard language in context.

Listen here ...

Find out more about ...

• Correct or conventional – a linguist’s perspective
• Better versus standard
• Zombie rules, and what we can ditch
• Youth language – dumbing down English or enriching it?
• Young people's language in relation to identity and language change
• Varieties of English in written communication: globalization, national and cultural identities
• The internet’s impact on pedantry and peevery
• The relationship between knowledge and pedantry
• The difference between preferences and judgements
• Recognizing our own pedantry and respecting contextually appropriate style
• Stepping outside our linguistic comfort zones

Mentioned in the show

• Radical Copyeditor blog
• ‘The Business of Being a Writer, with Jane Friedman’
• Rob Drummond Linguistics
• TED Talk: 'John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!'
• Rob's graph: Linguistic knowledge versus linguistic pedantry

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Denise and Louise talk about how to use question marks in fiction and non-fiction according to convention.

Listen here ...

Find out more about

• Direct questions
• Indirect questions
• How-to statements
• Idiomatic phrases and question marks
• Double punctuation
• Uncertain dates and date ranges
• Indicating uncertainty

Mentioned in the show

• But Can I Start A Sentence With “But”? by Carol Saller
• Making a Point: The Pernickety Story of English Punctuation by David Crystal

Music credit
‘Vivacity’ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

Here's how to use quote marks (or speech marks) according to publishing convention in your fiction writing. The guidance covers both US English and UK English conventions.

In this post, I cover the following:

• What quote marks are used for
• Omitting a closing quote mark in dialogue
• Whether to use single or double quote marks
• Whether to use straight or curly quote marks
• Where the closing quote mark goes in relation to other punctuation​
• When not to use quote marks​

What quote marks are used for
Quote marks are used in 3 ways in fiction:

• Character dialogue
• To distance the narrator from what's being reported 
• ​To denote song titles and other works

Character dialogue
Quote marks show that we’re reporting what someone else is saying or said. 

​Each new speaker's dialogue should appear on a new line and include opening and closing quote marks.

To distance the narrator from what's being reported 
The tone of the distancing rendered by the quote marks will depend on narrative intent. Perhaps the voice is sarcastic. Or the author might want the reader to suspend belief by indicating that a character considers a word or phrase unreliable.

Imagine the character is saying so-called or supposed or allegedly before the word in quotes.

A word of caution: Don't be tempted to differentiate distancing terms in the narrative from dialogue by using an alternate style. If there are double speech marks around the dialogue, there should be double marks around the distancing words.

To denote song titles and other works
Quote marks are also used to identify certain published works such as song titles and book chapter titles.

So, for example, if a writer is referring to an album or book title, this is rendered in italic. However, when it comes to a song on an album, or a chapter in a book, it's conventional to use quote marks.

Omitting a closing quote mark in dialogue
There's one occasion where it's acceptable to omit the closing speech mark in dialogue: same speaker, new paragraph.

So, if you want your dialogue to take a new paragraph while retaining the current speaker, use a quotation mark at start of the new line but omit the closing one at the end of the previous paragraph.

​Single versus double quote marks
There’s no rule, just convention.

There are lots of Englishes: US, UK, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African, Indian, etc. Each has its own preferences and idiosyncrasies.

Focus on which English your audience will expect, and punctuate your writing accordingly. Whichever style you choose, the main thing is be consistent. 
​

• In the UK, it’s more common to use single quote marks. And if there’s a quote within the quote, that’s a double. You might hear quotes within quotes called nested quotes.
• In US English it’s conventional to use double quote marks with nested singles. 

If you choose double quote marks, use the correct symbol, not two singles.

Straight versus curly quote marks
Curly quote marks are more conventionally known as smart quotes.

​It’s conventional in mainstream publishing to use smart or curly quotation marks, not unidirectional ones.

Changing straight quotes to smart quotes is one of the initial clean-up jobs an editor will carry out when they start work on a file. To prevent the problem occurring from the minute you begin typing:
 

• Go to FILE and select OPTIONS
• Select PROOFING, then click on the AUTOCORRECT OPTIONS button
• Choose the AUTOFORMAT AS YOU TYPE tab
• Make sure there’s a tick in the "STRAIGHT QUOTES" WITH “SMART QUOTES” box
• Click on OK

 
If you’ve pasted material into your book from elsewhere, or you didn’t check autocorrect options before you began typing, there might be some rogue unidirectional marks in your file. To change them quickly, do a global find/replace:
 

• Select CTRL+H on your keyboard to open FIND AND REPLACE
• Type a quotation mark into the FIND WHAT box
• Type the same quotation mark into the REPLACE WITH box
• Click on the REPLACE ALL button

The closing quote mark in relation to other punctuation​
In fiction, punctuation related to dialogue is placed similarly whether you're writing in US or UK style: within the quote marks.

Here are some examples:

​However, there's a difference when it comes to distancing or cited works. Note the different placement of the commas and full stops in the US and UK examples. In US English, the commas come before the closing quotation marks; in UK English, they come after.

When not to use quote marks
There are 2 issues to consider here:

• Thoughts 
• Emphasis

Thoughts
CMOS at section 13.43 says you can use quote marks to indicate thought, imagined dialogue and other internal discourse if you want to. However, I recommend you don't. For one thing, I can’t remember the last time I saw this approach used in commercial fiction coming out of a mainstream publisher’s stable.

But the best reason for not putting thoughts in quote marks is because it might confuse your reader. The beauty of quote marks – or speech marks – is that they indicate speech. Let them do their job!

Emphasis 
It can be tempting to use quote marks in your writing to draw attention to a word or phrase, but it’s rarely necessary and could even have the opposite effect to what you intended. It works instead as a distancing tool, as discussed above.

If you’re tempted to use quote marks for emphasis, imagine saying the sentence out loud, and making air quotes with your fingers as you speak. Would your character/narrator say it like that? If the answer's no, leave out the quote marks. Italic will work better. Or recast your dialogue so that the reader can work out where to place the stress themselves.

Summing up
If in doubt about how to use quote marks for your book, consult a style manual. I recommend the Chicago Manual of Style, the Penguin Guide to Punctuation and New Hart’s Rules, all of which offer industry-standard guidance.

Fancy listening instead?
If you'd prefer to listen to the advice offered here, Denise Cowle (a non-fiction editor) and I chat about how to use quote marks in all types of writing on The Editing Podcast. You can listen right here or via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast platform