Common_Errors_in_English_usage

quoted words and phrases within quotations.
"Angela had the nerve to tell me "When I saw 'BYOB' on your invitation,
I assumed it meant 'Bring Your Old Boyfriend'."
British usage has traditionally been to reverse this relationship, with
single quotation marks being standard and double ones being used only
for quotations within quotations. (The English also call quotation marks
"inverted commas," though only the opening quotation mark is actually
inverted­­and flipped, as well.) However, usage in the UK is shifting
toward the US pattern, (see, for instance, "The Times" of London);
though the printing of fiction tends to adhere to the older British
pattern, where US students are most likely to encounter it.
Block quotations like this should not be surrounded by any quotation
marks at all.
(A passage this short should not be rendered as a block quotation; you
need at least three lines of verse or five lines of prose to justify a
block quotation.) Normally you should leave extra space above and below
a block quotation.
When quoting a long passage involving more than one paragraph, quotation
marks go at the beginning of each paragraph, but at the end of only the
final one. Dialogue in which the speaker changes with each paragraph has
each speech enclosed in its own quotation marks.
Titles of books and other long works that might be printed as books are
usually italicized (except, for some reason, in newspapers); but the
titles of short poems, stories, essays, and other works that would be
more commonly printed within larger works (anthologies, collections,
periodicals, etc.) are enclosed in quotation marks.
There are different patterns for regulating how quotation marks relate
to other punctuation. Find out which one your teacher or editor prefers
and use it, or choose one of your own liking, but stick to it
consistently. One widely accepted authority in America is The Chicago
Manual of Style, whose guidelines are outlined below. Writers in
England, Canada, Australia, and other British­influenced countries
should be aware that their national patterns will be quite different and
variable.
I spent the morning reading Faulkner's "Barn Burning," which seemed to
be about a pyromaniac.
Periods are also normally placed inside quotation marks (with the
exception of terms being defined, see above). Colons and semicolons,
however, are preceded by quotation marks.
If the quoted matter ends with a question mark or exclamation point, it
is placed inside the quotation marks:
John asked, "When's dinner?"