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xkcd #2954: Bracket Symbols (xkcd.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Alt text:

’"‘”’" means "I edited this text on both my phone and my laptop before sending it"

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I don't get the "Someone British is talking" bit

We only use the singular ' to indicate speech within speech -

John said, "I was just speaking to Charlie, and he said 'It's not often XKCD gets things wrong', and I agreed".

I could be wrong but that's what I was taught

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

The use of quotation marks, also called inverted commas, is very slightly complicated by the fact that there are two types: single quotes (` ') and double quotes (" "). As a general rule, British usage has in the past usually preferred single quotes for ordinary use, but double quotes are now increasingly common; American usage has always preferred double quotes.

University of Sussex

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

British English often uses single quotation marks to identify the outermost text of a primary quotation versus double quotation marks for inner, nested quotations.

From wiki

Huh, just shows you how I was taught the British way many years ago, but adopted the American way due to reading so many bloody books!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Old British person here, I was always taught double quotation marks for speech and single quotation marks for actually quoting something.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Pull out your closest volume of Lord of the Rings and take a look. My copy at least has single-quotes for the speech text and double-quotes are used for nested speech. I guess it might be up to the publisher (eg: my copy of Harry Potter has been "Americanized" and thus uses double-quotes for the first level of speech text), but every copy of LotR i've run across uses single-quotes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I heard somewhere it was to save ink.

Maybe they were pulling my leg.