In a quotation it’s important to make sure you use the exact words from the original text. In most critical essays, it’s better to use shorter quotations in a precise way rather than write out very ...

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 ...

Our language needs quotation marks. Without them, we couldn't know who said what to whom or even what they meant. Unfortunately, using them can prove tricky. Quotations marks appear in both double and ...

Picture this: A music reviewer makes a reference to the song “Space Truckin’” by Deep Purple. You want to quote him on it. Specifically, you want to quote a sentence in which the writer just happened ...

Ed, I am dizzy from the effect of your arguments about why “the American convention on quotation punctuation [is] seriously defective.” Let me respond along several fronts. (Like you, I will counsel ...

"We’ve got to have rules and obey them. After all we’re not savages." "I will live in the past, present and the future." "I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that ...