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, ...

Quotation marks are used to set off a person's words, whether spoken or written. They are placed at both the beginning and end of the quote. Ex: Sue remarked, "I'll meet you at the movies," A comma is ...

Andrew Heisel’s Lexicon Valley article last year on single versus double quotation marks piqued the interest of Keith Houston, author of Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and ...

I’ve gotten a lot of emails recently about where to put periods and commas relative to quotation marks. The notes were prompted by a recent column in which I mentioned that, in American English, a ...

Use double quotation marks (" ") to enclose phrases or entire sentences that were taken word for word from someone else. Quotation marks are not needed for paraphrasing. Example: The dog he brings on ...

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 ...