Differing quotation norms between US and UK markets...

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I’m currently submitting queries to publishers and agents in various markets around the world. Through it all I’ve taken care to adhere to the grammar, spelling and punctuation norms of each respective market in my query chapters. This gets complicated for quotations. Until recently I didn’t realize that the UK and other markets used single quotes (or inverted commas) for dialogue and double quotes for quotes within quotes, the opposite of the US norm.

Is there a way on export to globally change which norm I’m following? If I apply two sets of conversions on export, the first being a " to ', and the second a ’ to ", will it not just revert / nullify the previous conversion? And what about the apostrophe? Is it not the same character as the single close quote?

Currently every time I tweak my text, I have to export RTFs for each and manually consider each conversion in context before moving to the next. It isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. I can globally convert all the open " to ', and the close " to ', but then I’m not able to convert the quotes within quotes or even find them easily because now everything is the same. If I set up the conversions on export, won’t it do one and then the other as I would, leading to the aforementioned negation problem?

It’s all so very unnecessary. I blame Noah Webster and Benjamin Franklin. Why couldn’t they just leave the rules of English to the people for whom it was named?

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[I waffled on a bit below. The short version is that you shouldn’t need to worry about changing your quotation marks for the UK unless this is explicitly stated as a requirement by particular agents, because we use double speech marks in the UK anyway. Many publishers just use single quotes as a matter of house style, it seems.]

There is no easy way to do this (for the very reasons your surmise), but I wouldn’t recommend doing it either - unless you know it is required by the people to whom you are submitting. The way we use quotation marks over here (I’m British) is somewhat odd - the only time we ever see single quotes used for dialogue (or double quotes for quotes within quotes) is in published books such as novels - and even then, it’s not all of them (although it is the majority of UK-published books). Ultimately, it seems to be a matter of house style.

However, I don’t know anyone who actually writes using single quotes (although no doubt someone here does!). Learning to write in the 70s and 80s, I was taught to use double quotes for speech at school. When I was a primary teacher in the 2000s, I likewise taught children to use double quotes. (Here you can see a government document on punctuation taught in the National Curriculum, in which the example of speech marks - The conductor shouted, “Sit down!” - uses double quotation marks.) When we type, we use double quotes for dialogue. Every essay I wrote at the universities I attended used double quotes for speech.

In fact, I’ve always been curious about why some publishers use single quotation marks. It seems that the Oxford Dictionaries website (which you would think would be definitive) and several others state that it is convention to use single quotes in English written work, and yet, as I say, it’s not a convention I’ve ever seen used outside of published books. (And if you do a search on the 1813 edition of Pride and Prejudice - published in London - you’ll see it uses double quotes, as did Jane Austen in her handwritten manuscript. So it’s you Americans - assuming you are American - who are correct in your speech mark usage and British publishers who have done something weird.)

My English teacher in high school told me that the only reason single quotes are used in published books was to save ink during the war - I doubt this is true, as I’ve never found any evidence for it (aside from one claim online about it being down to an 1812 blockade). According to Wikipedia, the single quotation mark is newer anyway, and only evolved as a way of indicating secondary quotes within the double quotes. (Wikipedia also seems to suggest that our tendency to use single quotation marks only dates back to the 1960s.)

Take a look at some British newspapers, though:

guardian.co.uk
thetimes.co.uk

They all use double quotes for speech (although they may use single quotes in headlines).

A random selection of books from my shelves suggests that even publishers switch between different styles in different books. One novel publish in the UK by Vintage uses double quotes, another single quotes; a 1989 edition of Unbearable Lightness of Being by Faber uses double quotes, a 1995 edition by the same publisher uses single quotes. The vast majority certainly use single quotes, but it’s by no means uniform.

As far as I know, everyone over here writes using double quotes and these are changed by the publisher if the publisher’s style is to use single quotes. (My wife is a journalist and had to train herself to use single quotes for one magazine she wrote for, but that was the exception rather than the rule.)

So, unless the UK agents to whom you are submitting explicitly state on their website or elsewhere that they require single quotations for speech, then I would not worry about it. I’m English and if I ever get to a point where I can submit something to an agent, I would use double speech marks too. We are used to reading both types, single and double, and rarely notice it, and nearly always write using double speech marks.

(Apologies for the long reply - it’s a topic I’m interested in!)

All the best,
Keith

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Thank you for explaining this, and in such glorious historic detail. I was a bit worried about the quote order, but now I’ll let it go.

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Funnily enough, this evening I did a straw poll on my kids to see what they had been taught. I asked them, "Write ‘Hello he said’ as though it’s direct speech. My elder two (12 and 14) used single quotes, my youngest (8) used double quotes. My 14 year-old said that he had been taught to use double quotes (“sixty-sixes and ninety-nines”, just as teachers used to tell us) but had got in the habit of using single quotes from books he has been reading and no one seems to care (they go to a good school, I hasten to add!). This is unsurprising, as he hates writing so minimising marks on the page is very him. My 12 year-old said she had been taught to use single quotes by their English teacher. My 8 year-old had very definitely been taught to use double quotes (she’s in the prep for the same school). So basically, it seems we’re all over the place.

I don’t even notice whether books use double or single quotes (unless I’m asked in a thread like this!), because UK books have both. I prefer double quotes, though, as that seems “right” to me given what I was taught at school.

I am now curious to know whether any English schools teach single quotes, or whether there are any English people on here who type or write using single quotes because that’s the way they were taught.

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I’m also English, and I have also always used double inverted commas. But I have just had a look at my copy of Hart’s Rules (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart’s_Rules) 39th edition, reprinted 1984, and I found this on page 45:

“Single marks are to be used for a first quotation; then double for a quotation within a quotation. If there should be yet another quotation within the second quotation it is necessary to revert to single quotation marks.”

It would appear, therefore, that this convention is an Oxford University Press house style that has spread elsewhere. (And in passing, it might be worth noting that OUP still uses the -ize spellings instead of the -ise that is more common in Britain nowadays. So in some things we seem to be happy to vote against OUP!)

Many years ago, I seem to recall reading in one of Michael Legat’s books (perhaps this? amazon.co.uk/Dear-Author-Pu … &keywords=“dear+author”) that most editors disliked single quotes, as they felt they were less clear, but were obliged to use them because of house rules or established convention. If the convention is slipping at all, I am very glad to hear it. It is one case in which I think Hart’s Rules is wrong.

And “Hello” to Keith – I must drop you a line!

PS: I’ve just looked at the 1905 edition of Hart, which can be found online – the rule is the same, so it is evidently not a new style. And I’m pleased to see that they don’t use that abomination of the capital letter after a colon. I detest that. It is one innovation that I can do without …

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Hello!

I dislike that, too. I’ve noticed it in a couple of books recently, but as they were American, I can forgive them, as it seems that is another rule that is different across the pond.

It’s interesting that the OUP seems to be out of step with standard usage when it comes to speech marks, though.

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I too am English - well, not exactly, I’m one of those “citizens of nowhere” that our Prime Minister likes to condemn, but my writing habits are English - and I too have always used double quotes as above, with single quotes inside the double quotes and double quotes inside the single quotes, and then alternating - as Terry Pratchett might say - “all the way down”. I was taught to do so at an early age by my English teacher, Ben Sowerby, who taught me a lot of useful things, and not even a lifetime of journalism taught me anything different.

I notice that this is also the rule today of The Times of London, generally speaking a good guide to the current custom and practice of ordinary written English in the UK.

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The Economist’s Style Guide also dictates double quotes: “Use single ones only for quotations within quotations.”

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Wow, thanks for all the in-depth discussion. I’m fascinated by these sorts of things myself. It appears that this very forum software adopts double marks for quoting other posts, as you’ll see above. It’s a tremendous relief to know that I won’t have to alter anything in the punctuation.

In the course of my submission adventure, I’ve run into several UK publishers who don’t accept manuscripts from overseas authors. Might any of you know the reason for this? Is it purely a matter of accounting? Maybe this is a topic for another thread.

At any rate I’m delighted to know that I don’t have to change my double quotes. Thanks again for all the information.

Wow, Keith, it sounds like Scrivener has been keeping you from doing the one thing you initially created it to do. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that it’s become The Greatest Reason to Own a Computer, but hopefully at some point you’ll be able to step back and create work. Or polish it. Or any of the things for which Scrivener is so indispensable.

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Just don’t say “Chaucer”, or Keith will go all dreamy :smiley:

Yes, I still remember the description of the wife in the Miller’s Tale …