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I have been reading a lot of self-published books lately. Some are excellent, some are terrible. One of the characteristics of a terrible self-published novel is a misunderstanding of how to use quotation marks properly.

Fixing the quotation marks won’t turn a bad book into a good one, but a this kind of error detracts from an otherwise good read.

And this problem or error is not restricted to just self-published books. I see it all the time in corporate memos, reports and even advertising.

So, for all you good authors out there, and for the sake of readers who know this, here is an easy to remember guide to using quotation marks.

Use quotation marks when appropriate

Use quotation marks to indicate the words of someone other than yourself. The most obvious example is to indicate that you are copying someone else’s work in your own.

“Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species.” — Carl Sagan, Cosmos.

We also use them to indicate dialogue in fiction. More on that later.

Finally, we use quotation marks around shorter phrases and even single words to indicate either that we are using someone else’s term, even if that someone else is a group like young people, or that we’re using a word in a special way, or that we’re writing about the word as a word.

“I can’t even” was one of the most popular slang terms to emerge last year.

There are two opposite meanings of “inflammable.”

But you should never use quotation marks to excuse lazy, poor or misleading word choice. And never use them for emphasis.

Now, make sure you’re using the right kinds of marks to indicate someone else’s words.

Use curly quotes

I mentioned in an earlier blog that quotation marks, “ and ”, are “curly,” or at least angled. The opening and the closing marks are mirror images. They’re distinct from minute and second marks, or feet and inch marks, ʹ and “.

Most modern word processors automatically put the opening and closing quotation marks in place for you when you hit the ” key. They do this by analyzing what other characters surround the mark. If there is an empty space before it, that tells the application that it’s the opening of a quotation, and to use the opening mark. Any other character before it, and the program puts in the closing mark.

Make sure that your program is replacing your minute and second marks with the appropriate opening and closing marks. If it is not, then you’ll have to go into your application’s settings. In Microsoft Word, you go to File, Options, Proofing, AutoCorrect Options and check off “curly quotes.”

Double quotes are your default

At least in North American English, double quotes are the starting point. When you want to indicate dialogue, enclose it with quotation marks. Like this:

“Am I under arrest?” Sam asked, alarm in his tone.

“No, not at all,” said Special Agent Storm. “I just want to ask you a few questions about yesterday.”

Use single quotes only within double quotes

Sometimes, you want to indicate that someone you are quoting has quoted someone else.

Our teacher asked “Do you know who gave the speech ‘I have a dream’?”

The British reverse this use. They tend to use single quotes as the go-to version, and double quotes within single quotes. That’s fine. If you prefer that use, go ahead. Just be consistent.

But don’t make the error of using single quotes for single words (unless you’re defaulting to single quotes for most uses). Some writers seem to think that double quotes are necessary for longer passages, but single quotes are strong enough, or something, to contain a short phrase.

To sum up

Use double, curly quotes most of the time, especially if you’re in North America. Use single quotes within double quotes.

And if you want to affect the British, then use single quotes most of the time, and double quotation marks ONLY for quotes within other quotes.

I hope that helps.