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 Email: [log in to unmask] Website: http://www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~elw33 Phone [00 44] (0)1223 350256 To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/