What Do You Mean to "Say"?
Quotation marks ARE brat: A copyeditor's exploration of English's most chaotic punctuation
Quotation marks come in all shapes. In English “they look like this” or ‘this.’ In French, «les guillemets look like this.» As an academic copyeditor currently working on a book by a German author, I recently learned that Anführungszeichen „look like inverted commas.“ And in Japanese,「 かぎ括弧 / kagikakko」look sort of like「square brackets.」
The quotation mark’s origins, according to Keith Houston’s Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks, trace back to the Library of Alexandria, where scholars marked lines of texts with a > symbol (called a diple) to designate their importance.
Eventually, diples were used by Christian scholars to mark up the Scriptures. What we now recognize as dashes, equal signs, and division signs were all used for the same purpose: to quote the word of God in critical texts.
This variety of punctuation, which continued to change over the centuries, became unified almost instantaneously with the invention of the printing press. The printers of Gutenberg’s movable type used double commas (,,) to emphasize certain lines of text, including quotations.
It was not until the invention of the modern novel in the 1700s that the need to quote fictional characters in direct dialogue arose—and with it, the standardized quotation marks as we know them today were born.
But, of course, dialogue is not all quotation marks are used for.
In his 1942 manual How to Read a Page, British literary critic Ivor A. Richards called attention to what he termed the “Specialized Quotation Marks.” He wrote:
Specialized Quotation Marks
WE all recognize—more or less unsystematically—that quotation marks serve varied purposes:
1. Sometimes they show merely that we are quoting and where our quotation begins and ends.
2. Sometimes they imply that the word or words within them are in some way open to question and are only to be taken in some special sense with reference to some special definition.
3. Sometimes they suggest further that what is quoted is nonsense or that there is really no such thing as the thing they profess to name.
4. Sometimes they suggest that the words are improperly used. The quotation marks are equivalent to the so-called.
5. Sometimes they only indicate that we are talking of the words as distinguished from their meanings. "Is" and "at" are shorter than "above." "Chien" means what "dog" means, and so on.
Richards pointed out how “heavily we overwork this too serviceable writing device” more than 80 years ago.
He proposed solutions to the overworked mark that might seem funny to us. For example, when using a word as the word itself (“apple” has two syllables), he suggested putting superscript Ws around the word (ʷappleʷ has two syllables).
He proposed solutions—because quotation marks are in fact a problem.
I see writers use quotation marks for endless reasons—and 100% of the book-length works I edit use quotation marks ambiguously. Yep. 100%.
Here is a made-up example:
She was having a “hot girl” summer.
What purpose do the quotation marks have in this sentence?
They could indicate irony—that she was not, in actuality, having a hot girl summer.
They could indicate some discomfort with the slang term—that she was totally having a hot girl summer, but the writer felt conflicted about using the colloquial phrase. This is like a wink to the reader, simultaneously expressing the written sentence while also implying But you and I are above pop culture references, aren’t we?
The marks could come from an urge to acknowledge that Megan Thee Stallion coined the term, not the writer. (But it’s not clear to the reader that this is what the quotation marks indicate.)
And quotation marks often serve another purpose: Sometimes they’re the punctuation equivalent of the writer’s own brain fog. They’re meant to express approximation. I see this in both fiction and nonfiction—quotation marks serve (probably subconsciously) as an indicator that the writer couldn’t think of precisely the right way to express their thoughts, so they wrapped up the wrong term in quotation marks and called it a day. This is a fine thing to do in a first draft, but I recommend writers train themselves to notice these “approximation marks” and edit them out for clarity.
So in this case, maybe she’s not having a hot girl summer. Maybe she’s having a brat summer, but the writer couldn’t remember that term, so “hot girl” summer it is. Hopefully their copyeditor catches the inaccuracy and queries it.
As you can see, even in this simple sentence, the quotation marks could indicate many different things—differences that alter the tone and meaning of the sentence. Various readers will interpret the quotation marks differently, giving the writer less control over the expression of their own thoughts.
Let me invite even more ambiguity into the sentence:
Now there’s a citation reference. Are the words “hot girl” being quoted from the cited text? Or is the fact that she was having a hot girl summer being cited, and the quotation marks convey, again, the writer’s irony or discomfort or approximation? Who knows!
Watch “Your” Tone
One of the other problems with quotation marks is that they can be used to indicate irony and sarcasm, so readers will sometimes insert sarcasm into a text when it isn’t intended by the writer.
In nonfiction, I come across many sentences like these:
It’s “hoped” that readers will write in to share their opinions.
It’s hoped that readers will write in to share their “opinions.”
In the first case, the quotation marks were probably originally used because the writer wasn’t sure what verb to choose—that subconscious marker of uncertainty. However, it reads sarcastically—like the writer doesn’t actually want readers to share their thoughts. The unfriendliness is unintended, but it’s there nevertheless.
In the second version, maybe the writer put opinions in quotation marks because the readers’ responses will be printed in a section called Opinions, and the quotation marks are meant to indicate the section title. However, the reader won’t know this, so they may feel that there’s something condescending or insulting in the writer’s tone—that the quotation marks reflect how little the writer thinks of the readers’ “opinions.”
Advice for Self-Revising Writers
When you’re revising your own writing, notice the non-dialogue quotation marks in your text. Pause at each usage and ask yourself:
What purpose do quotation marks have here?
Will the reader be able to understand my intended purpose?
Imagine the sentence without quotation marks. Does the meaning become clearer? Does it become obvious that the wrong word was used, and you ought to replace the word in quotations with the correct word?
Very often, the quotation marks won’t be needed.
Make sure you “know” why they’re “there.” Otherwise you may sound “odd,” “rude,” “confusing,” or “annoying” to “your” “reader.”
Some Quick Rules for Quotation Marks, According to The Chicago Manual of Style
Use so-called or quotation marks. Using both is redundant.
a. She was having a so-called hot girl summer.
b. She was having a “hot girl” summer.
c. She was having a so-called “hot girl” summer. < This is wrong.Always cite your source. Don’t make your reader (or editor) guess whether/what you’re quoting.
a. Every writer eventually has a project that demands that they dig deeper than they ever have before—“a crossroads novel.”³ < Reference number indicates citation for the source of the quoted phrase (sometimes this is ambiguous, but it is acceptable).
b. As Stephen King writes in his introduction to The Shining, every writer eventually has a project that demands that they dig deeper than they ever have before—“a crossroads novel.” < No reference, but the quoted source is clear.
c. Every writer eventually has a project that demands that they dig deeper than they ever have before—“a crossroads novel.” < Here it’s not clear that someone else is being quoted.
Quotes are often used to distance the writer from the word being used. Chicago advises writers to do this sparingly. And here’s my advice: When putting something offensive (for example, a slur) in quotation marks, ask yourself whether using the word is necessary at all. Just because it’s in quotations doesn’t mean that the writer is not responsible for the terminology being used. Instead of reproducing dehumanizing language, imagine what you’d say if you were recognizing the humanity of your subject—and then write that instead.
a. The “dirty rats,” according to Scooby-Doo, were chasing mice. < Why is the author repeating a pejorative and inaccurate phrase when it’s not needed?
b. The cats, according to Scooby-Doo, were chasing mice. < Here the writer says what they actually mean.To use words as words, choose either quotation marks or italics and stick to it throughout your manuscript. Both of the examples below are correct, but not within the same manuscript:
a. The word quote can be a noun or a verb.
b. The word “quote” can be a noun or a verb.
Quotation Marks Are Brat
Quotation marks are the most chaotic punctuation mark, in this humble copyeditor’s opinion. They often muddy meaning even when they’re used correctly. But until alternatives like Ivor Richard’s superscript ʷwordsʷ come into style (any day now, I’m sure), we’re stuck with them. All I can recommend is that we revise our writing thoughtfully.
Until next time,
Hannah Varacalli
Copy & Developmental Editor
www.hveditorial.com