Punctuation
Quotation marks
Quotation marks can either be single (i.e. '...') or double ("...") and are used to indicate direct speech or material that has been written by someone else.
Direct speech:
- She said, "Get the cat out of the house"
- She said, 'Get the cat out of the house'.
Quoting someone else's writing:
- Far too many people fail to understand the sexism of Aristotle's claim that 'man was a political animal'
- Far too many people fail to understand the sexism of Aristotle's claim that "man was a political animal".
Quotation marks can also be used to highlight a word that is being defined or named.
For example:
- By 'sexism', I mean discrimination of women by men on the basis of sex
- We use 'sexism' to designate discrimination of women by men on the basis of sex.