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Home / Style Guide / Punctuation / Quotation marks

Quotation marks Edit

Topics

Quotation marks with commas and periods
Straight and curly quotation marks
Single quotation marks

Highlight: Use straight double quotation marks.

Quotation marks with commas and periods

Place commas and periods inside quotation marks; in the American (US) English style.

Examples

British English: Further research is published on the homepage under the dropdown titled “Recent Findings”.

American (US) English: Further research is published on the homepage under the dropdown titled “Recent Findings.”

If punctuation is part of the quoted material, include it inside the quotation marks.

Examples

Recommended: What does it mean if I see a message saying: “Error Code 345. Do you want to continue?”

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When you put a specific string, term, or phrase in quotation marks, put any punctuation outside the quotation marks. Don’t add or remove anything from the string or term. Altering it may cause unforeseen issues or difficulties.

Examples

Not recommended: If you change the input field titled “password,” the file needs to be updated.

Better: If you change the input field titled “password”, the file needs to be updated.

Recommended: If you change the input field titled password, the file needs to be updated.

Straight and curly quotation marks

The direction of curly quotation marks (“ ”) and apostrophes are often confused while writing documentation. If you use straight quotation marks (” “) the trouble of tracking and writing the starting and closing curly quotation marks is eliminated. Code specifically needs straight quotation marks for its syntax, in addition to user input fields. Furthermore, not all software environments use curly quotation marks.

Hence, in general, use straight quotation marks (” “).

Examples

Not recommended: What does it mean if I see a message saying: “Error Code 345. Do you want to continue?”

Recommended: What does it mean if I see a message saying: “Error Code 345. Do you want to continue?”

Single quotation marks

Use single quotation marks only in the following cases:

In code, where single quotation marks are used.
When you have to nest a quotation inside quotation marks.

While nesting a quotation inside another quotation, use the American (US) English style, which is to use double quotation marks for the outer quotation, and single quotation marks for the inner one.

Examples

British English: He said, ‘My colleague asked, “What does this error mean?” as he hurriedly tried to fix it.’

American (US) English: He said, “My colleague asked, ‘What does this error mean?’ as he hurriedly tried to fix it.”

Last updated: April 5, 2021

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