© Judi Birnberg There must be a comma and quotation marks somewhere.
Did you know periods and commas always go inside quotation marks? Would I lie to you? (The Brits do the opposite, however.)
Here are a couple of examples:
Our teacher assigned us to read Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw.”
“The Turn of the Screw,” a short novel by Henry James, is considered a type of ghost story.
Here are the traditional ways to write about various forms of media:
1. Book titles: italics
2. Book chapters that use words (but not Chapter 1, for example): quotation marks
2. Magazine titles: italics
3. Magazine articles: quotation marks
4. Song and movie titles: quotation marks
Here’s what happens when people go nuts with quotation marks, trying to emphasize ideas:
Here’s a sentence in an email from a friend. What do you think of his use of quotation marks?
[Tom] spent the summer in Buenos Aires doing a practicum with the poor, ensuring clean water is getting to their “shanty” homes.
If these people are poor and living in Buenos Aires, their homes are shanties. But the use of quotation marks indicates that they really aren’t. The word “shanty” is certainly not being quoted. Calling attention to a word by putting it in quotes is not an acceptable use.
• Use quotation marks around words actually spoken or written by someone.
• Use quotation marks when you are using a word in a manner that is not literal. For example, you could write that the previous American Embassy in Moscow was found to be full of “bugs.” Your reader will then know that you are not referring to cockroaches and that “bugs” is slang for listening devices.
Every day I see quotation marks misused. Painted on a plumber’s truck is information telling me he has been “in business since 1973.” No one ever said that. Misused quotation marks are a distraction. Don’t annoy your readers.
WordThoughts 