In English, we can indicate quoted text with either single quotes, ‘–’ or double quotes, “–”.
Typically it is expected that you use one style or the other, but they can also be combined. This can lead to some confusion as to exactly when you should use double or single quotation marks, and I see writers coming up with their own rules for what type of quotes should use which style.
So here is a brief guide to choosing between single and double quotation marks.
Should you use single or double quotation marks?
As a matter of style, there are only really two questions to answer to decide whether to use single or double quotation marks in your writing:
- Is there an established style that already decides this?
- If not, which style do you prefer?
The first question may be decided by a publishing house, company style, or even just a previous piece of writing which you want to be consistent with. You may even, for example, enter a correspondence and want to match the style of the person you are writing to, to be clear.
There is a regional consideration you might make, in that double quotations are more common in US English, and single quotations are more common in the UK English, but this is not a strict rule. My personal preference, in fact, is for double quotation marks, despite writing otherwise in UK English, for the simple reason that it feels more immediately clear to me, with less room for confusion with apostrophes.
If you don’t have an example to follow already, however, it really is your choice. Which looks better to you?
Once you have chosen a style, the main thing to bear in mind is to be consistent, and not switch between the two, otherwise the text can become confusing. This should be the same style throughout whatever you’re working on – a short story, an entire essay, an entire book.
That said, this website is actually a bad example of consistent quotation marks. Each article should have either single or double quotation marks, but some articles use one style and some the other. This is because the articles were all written separately and the choice varied depending on my mood on the day. I’d recommend not writing this way; I normally only write with double quotation marks, so I’m not sure why some articles here are different!
Anyway, once you have chosen a style, you may still need to use the other style – but there are particular rules for that.
How do you use both single and quotation marks?
Once you have decided upon whether to use single or double quotation marks, the simple rule to stick to is to always use that style for any quoted text, whether it is dialogue, a questionable or emphasised word or phrase, or a quote from writing (if indicated with quotation marks and not another style, e.g. italics). I sometimes see writers mixing this up and using single quotes for dialogue and double for quoted names, for example, which is inconsistent and should be avoided.
However, you do sometimes need to mix in both styles, for one particular reason: to show that something is quoted within another quote. In other words, when you have something quoted that includes another quote (such as dialogue reporting someone else’s direct dialogue). We switch styles to clearly indicate this, so whichever style you have for the text overall, the other style is used for quotes within a quote. For example, these are the two most correct forms:
- Billy said, ‘I heard mother call it a “carrot cake”.’ (single quotes, double within)
- Billy said, “I heard mother call it a ‘carrot cake’.” (double quotes, single within)
(A brief additional note: as ‘carrot cake’ is a phrase and not a full sentence, the full stop belongs outside the single quotes, but this is a regional style. In US English, punctuation typically comes inside quotation marks even if the punctuation is not part of the quoted phrase.)
With this in mind, you should easily be able to decide whether a particular quote within your text needs single or double quotation marks by sticking consistently to either of these two main rules:
- Single quotation marks, double within
- Double quotation marks, single within
This is one of the first style rules I establish for any document I am working on, and I suggest you do the same! I hope this helps you produce consistent quotation marks, and do let me know if you have any questions.
