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Aster's avatar

Three quotations marks after a quote: is it correct ? When is it correct?

Asked by Aster (20028points) October 24th, 2010

I am reading a book by CS Lewis. After he quotes someone else there are three quotation marks. I’ve never seen this previously. Have you and when is it the proper punctuation if ever?

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5 Answers

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BarnacleBill's avatar

It is the correct way to cite a quote within a quote. Here is a MLA reference for quoting

muppetish's avatar

It is reserved for quotations within quotations. If the quote is particularly long, then it should be situated as a block quote instead.

My question is: when did quotes shift from ‘single’ to “double”? Lewis Carrol’s original text has dialogue written as: ‘Blah blah blah,’ said So-and-So. And when the speaker was quoting someone, such as a line from a poem, it would change to double-quotes: ‘Blah blah blah said “blah blah blah”, you know?’ said So-and-So.

I like the look of single quotes for dialogue.

Aster's avatar

THANK YOU ALL!!! I should know this by now. )-:

Kardamom's avatar

The British system uses both single and double quotation marks for the original quote, depending upon the sentence, and it’s not an exact rule (they’re kind of interchangeable). In the U.S. they use double quotes for the original quote, and then single quotes for the one inside, thus triple quotation marks

Now if I could just get the semi-colon thing down; I would be in heaven if I could use them correctly every time.

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