Nice to know that for once the British are more logical (over the placing of
punctuation at the end of quotations)!

I have just been checking the copy-editing of a book to be published in the
US and have found the general use of double inverted commas for all
quotations a limitation.  In Britain we use both double and single:

SINGLE  for
(i) quotations inside text (i.e. not when arranged, as is usual for long
quotations, as separate indented paragraphs);
(ii) the titles of articles in bibliographies;
(iii) the titles of items inside books (e.g. poems, short stories -- italics
for titles of books, journals, newspapers);
(iv) technical terms introduced for the first time (e.g. The process is
known as 'cavitation');
(v) to suggest a doubt about the ascription (e.g. The 'dentist' behaved with
perfect confidence. -- where the person referred to is known not to be a
dentist but to be pretending to be one).  A negative point here -- I warn my
students off from putting them round figurative terms, pointing out that the
fun of an image comes with an element of surprise and it upsets the workings
of imagery if you wave a red flag as you use one. (e.g. *The clouds
'blanketed' the sky.)  Similarly, if they choose to use a slang expression
because it seems ideal for the context, there is no need to feel coy and
excuse it with single inverted commas;  however, if they are quoting
someone's else's slang or idiom, then it is a different matter (e.g. If you
go in his garden again, he says he'll 'stick you up a gum-tree'.)

DOUBLE for 
(i) spoken dialogue;
(ii) for quotations inside quotations  (e.g.  'He said "hope" not "home".')
It is not uncommon now in works of fiction to use single for spoken dialogue
(sometimes none at all, which is confusing).

Edmond Wright


Dr. Edmond Wright
3 Boathouse Court
Trafalgar Road
Cambridge
CB4 1DU
England

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Website: http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~elw33
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