"don‘t quote me on that”

Chris Phin (he's the deputy editor of MacFormat magazine, don't you know) has been in touch to say that he's just posted on his own blog a useful little article entitled 'ten typographic mistakes everyone makes'. And a jolly useful article it is as well: something to have to hand the next time you're faced with formatting a chunk of text (but only if you're using a Mac, mind). Actually, I think Chris is doing us a big favour by keeping it short and simple.

But if you want a fuller explanation about the rights and wrongs of quote marks, you could do worse than take a peek at the Ministry of Type's 'Quote, Unquote'. And if esoteric is your thing, take half a day out to get your head around Matthew Peterson's 'The Cuckoo Bird and the Keyboard' (the best bit of which, to my mind, is the footnote which declares that 'he co-operates the design studio Terms & Conditions with KT Meaney - that's certainly one to add to Ben's 'ridiculous company names' category).

But all of them, to a point, miss the point. Because the biggest crime against the quote is the trend towards "clients" writing copy with lots of references using 'double' quotes when they should be using "single" ones. Don't you agree? (Mike? - we haven't heard from you for a long time.)

Comments

[Mike Reed]

Hello David. Sorry, been a bit busy. But I never miss a post.

Chris's article is great. I love anyone willing to be that spectacularly pedantic. And straight 'quotes' drive me up the wall, so three cheers for that one.

But a rule about single versus double? That's a new one on me. Personally, I start with single quotes, but I always thought that as long as you alternated consistently (i.e. double within single within double, etc), you were okay.

Do you know something I don't? I'm a writer, remember, not a typographer. There may well be a typographic convention beyond the purely grammatical ones.

[davidthedesigner]

It's not a typographic thing, Mike, but I was taught that double quotes were only used for quoting speech - and for everything else you'd use single quotes. So, for instance, if you said "something" to me, that would be different than merely saying 'something' to me. Or am I the one being spectacularly pedantic now?

[Mike Reed]

You may well be. But if so, more power to you. You've got me reaching for Fowler's, as one must in these circumstances. Old H.W. says:

'There is no universally accepted distinction between the single form ('...') & the double ("..."). The more sensible practice is to regard the single as the normal, & to resort to the double only when, as fairly often happens, an interior quotation is necessary in the middle of a passage that is itself quoted.'

He is referring both to 'speech marks' and to inverted commas (as he calls them) that denote things like titles (e.g. 'Paradise Lost' by Milton).

This is a great relief for me, of course.

By the way, a plug: today I've put a new and infuriating example of bad punctuation on my blog, as those following your kind link will discover.

[davidthedesigner]

'Well, "blow me down" Mike - looks like I've been well and truly "fowlered".'

[austin]

In American usage, the double quote is "standard" for quotations or calling out text, and the single quote is only for second-level quotes.

[Mike Reed]

Yes, but Americans also do crazy things like spell 'theatre' as 'theater' and 'aluminum' instead of 'aluminium'. Dangerous mavericks, the Americans.