Double quotation marks are used for direct quotations and titles of compositions such as books, plays, movies, songs, lectures and TV shows. They also can be used to indicate irony and introduce an ...

Only Slate Plus members can gift Slate stories. Become a member to share 10 free articles a month. Andrew Heisel’s Lexicon Valley article last year on single versus double quotation marks piqued the ...

A few years ago while copy editing an article, I was shocked to see something like this: “I lecture my sales staff about what I call ‘me syndrome,’” Jones said. What shocked me was the punctuation.

Everyone knows that the world’s material resources — food, water, oil — are distributed unequally, but few realize that the same is true for punctuation. Take quotation marks: Some forms of writing, ...

Much has been said about misused quotation marks. Photos of signs boasting about “fresh” seafood and “free” refills abound on the Internet, offering a good laugh at the expense of business owners who ...