Punctuation: Quotation marks and apostrophes

What did she say exactly? You know what they always say... Well, Einstein said... We often repeat what other people have said, when speaking, as well as when writing. When we want to write down exactly what someone has said, quote someone, we use small signs – quotation marks – to show what we’re quoting.

They are always used in pairs, one at the beginning of the quote, ...and one at the end. Michael said, “I’d love some ice cream!” Lina answered that she’s “always up for ice cream”. The quotation marks help the reader know what a certain person has said. Generally, only words that are an exact quote should be within quotation marks. If you just want to describe the meaning of what someone said, rephrase it, it’s better not to use quotation marks.

Michael said that he really wanted some ice cream. Quotation marks can also be used to mark when a word or an expression is foreign, new, or not commonly used in English. They have ice cream called “gelato” here. ...or even to mark a certain distance to a word or expression you’re using. When quotation marks are used in this way they imply a silent “so called”, or even irony. The “ice cream” was more of a sauce, really.

Completely melted. Here, Michael lets us understand that it couldn’t even be called ice cream anymore. There are both double and single quotation marks. Single quotation marks are used within another quote: “Let’s get something else, I’d like to try that ‘gelato’ ice cream.” There is another mark that is often identical to the single quotation mark: the apostrophe. The apostrophe is never used in pairs.

It is used when expressing that someone owns something, or that a thing belongs to someone. The apostrophe shows possession in English. For example: Lina’s ice cream, The ice cream shop’s window. Apostrophes can also be used to show that one or more letters have been left out between two words, that the words have been contracted. Here are some examples: it is - It's a lovely day today.

there is - There’s chocolate who has - Who's eaten my ice cream? Contractions are very common in English, especially when talking. Because of this they are also common in texts that are written in a friendly manner, close to how you talk in person: informal writing. If you want to write in a way that is close to how people talk, you should use contractions. Contractions tend to be avoided in more formal texts, such as job applications, reports, and so on.

Mm! It’s great that we tried this “gelato” thing.