QUOTATION MARKS.
Rule I. Direct Quotation.—When the exact words of another are given, they should be inclosed in quotation marks.
EXAMPLES.
“He had the longest tongue and the shortest temper of any man, high or low, I ever met with.”—Wilkie Collins.
Prescott, in his “Conquest of Mexico,” tells us that intemperance among the Aztecs “was punished in the young with death, and in older persons with loss of rank and confiscation of property.”
REMARKS.
1. When the exact words of another are not given, quotation marks should not be used; as,—
Longfellow says,—
“Deeds are better things than words are.”
Longfellow somewhere says that deeds are better than words.
2. When words are quoted from a foreign language, they should be printed in italics, and the quotation marks omitted; as, “They have their good glebe lands in manu, and care not much to rake into title deeds.”—Lamb.
3. When words are to be italicized, a straight mark should be drawn underneath the words.
4. When a quotation is followed by a comma, semicolon, colon, or period, the punctuation mark should be placed within the quotation marks; as, “Mr. M’Adam writes sometimes with genuine humor, and an occasional entirely original simile shows evidence of the possession of what phrenologists call the faculty of ‘comparison;’ but the charm of the book is its rare perspicacity.”—Harper’s Magazine.
5. When a quotation is followed by an exclamation or an interrogation point, the punctuation mark should be placed within the quotation marks, if it forms a part of the quotation; as, “I feel almost like groaning, when a young mother shows me some marvel of embroidery or machine-stitching, saying triumphantly, ‘There, I did every stitch of that myself!’”—Scribner’s Monthly.
6. When a quotation is followed by an exclamation or an interrogation point, the punctuation mark should be placed outside of the quotation marks, if it belongs to the whole sentence and not to the quotation; as, “We wonder what Handel would have said to Mozart’s scoring of ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’!”—Atlantic Monthly. “Why cannot we hear, for instance, the wonderful curioso, ‘He gave his back to the smiters,’ that forms the second part of the air, ‘He was despised,’ and the duet for contralto and tenor, ‘O death where is thy sting’?”—Atlantic Monthly.
Rule II. Titles of Books.—Titles of books are generally inclosed in quotation marks.
EXAMPLES.
Morris’s “Story of Sigurd.”—Scribner’s Monthly.
“The Mikado’s Empire.”—N. A. Review.
“Daniel Deronda.”—Contemporary Review.
The Rev. W. W. Capes’s history of “The Early Roman Empire.”—Appleton’s Journal.
REMARKS.
1. The names of magazines and papers are generally printed in italics; as, The Atlantic, N. Y. Nation, Fraser’s Magazine, Appleton’s Journal, Nature, Popular Science Monthly.
2. In examining The Atlantic, Nation, Scribner’s Monthly, Harper’s, Appleton’s Magazine, Lippincott’s, Popular Science Monthly, Galaxy, Eclectic, N. A. Review, New Englander, London Quarterly, British Quarterly, Westminster Review, Edinburgh Review, Contemporary Review, The Fortnightly Review, we find that thirteen of these use quotation marks, and four use italics, in referring to the titles of books; eleven use italics, and six use quotation marks, in referring to magazines and papers.
Rule III. A Quotation within a Quotation.—When there is a quotation within a quotation, single marks should be used in addition to double marks.
EXAMPLES.
“Who was the blundering idiot who said that ‘fine words butter no parsnips.’ Half the parsnips of society are served and rendered palatable with no other sauce.”—Thackeray.
“There is a small but ancient fraternity, known as the Order of Gentlemen. It is a grand old order. A poet has said that Christ founded it; that he was ‘the first true gentleman that ever lived.’”—Winthrop.
REMARKS.
1. Sometimes the quotation within a quotation has a word or phrase that is quoted. The word or phrase must be inclosed in double marks.
2. In quoting Scripture, it is customary to place only double marks at the beginning and end of the quotation; as, “And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.”—Mark i. 41.
Rule IV. Paragraphs.—When several paragraphs are quoted in succession, double marks should be placed at the beginning of each paragraph, and at the end of the entire quotation.
EXAMPLE.
“The children woke. The little girl was the first to open her eyes.
“The waking of children is like the unclosing of flowers, a perfume seems to exhale from those fresh young souls. Georgette, twenty months old, the youngest of the three, who was still a nursing baby in the month of May, raised her little head, sat up in her cradle, looked at her feet, and began to chatter.
“A ray of morning fell across her crib; it would have been difficult to decide which was the rosiest, Georgette’s foot or Aurora.”—Hugo.
REMARKS.
1. A paragraph usually consists of several sentences. It begins on a new line, and is distinguished by a blank space on the left, at the commencement of the paragraph.
2. When parts of a quotation are omitted, use several stars to indicate the omission (* * * *), or place double marks at the beginning and end of each detached part of the quotation.