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Comment on xkcd #2954: Bracket Symbols

Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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sundray@lemmus.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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
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- Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  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!
  
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  - Codandchips@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Old British person here, I was always taught double quotation marks for speech and single quotation marks for actually quoting something.
    
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deo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I heard somewhere it was to save ink.
  
  Maybe they were pulling my leg.
  
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