Quotation marks (“ ”)
a. Direct quotations must reproduce exactly the wording, spelling, and punctuation of the original, with one exception: It is acceptable to change the initial letter of the quotation to a capital or lowercase letter to fit the syntax of the text.
b. The author is responsible to check every quotation against the original for accuracy.
c. In general we will avoid having quotes longer than six lines or about 50 words. Set quotations over six lines in block quotes. There is no need for quotation marks in block quotes. Smaller quotations go within the text. Quotations within the block quotation should be enclosed in double quotation marks. (See “Quotations, Block” for block quotation guidelines.)
d. Reference citations for block quotes always sit outside of the last punctuation mark in the quote and there is no full stop after the citation.
e.g. “Anything of value is going to cost you something.” (Shaughnessy 1993, p. 10)
e. If the quotation, either run into or set off from the text, is used as part of the author’s sentence, it begins with a lowercase letter, even though the original is a complete sentence and begins with a capital letter.
e.g. The Gospel of John begins with the assertion that “in the beginning was the Word.”
f. Direct conversation, whether run into or set off from the text, should always be enclosed in double quotation marks.
e.g. Travis protested, “I simply do not like the taste of tofu in food!” He had just finished eating a small bowl of tofu chili. “Ugh! Tofu has no taste, in my opinion.”
g. Double quotation marks should also be used with words or phrases that are coined or invented expressions, express irony, are slang or are otherwise worthy of distinguishing.
h. Do not use single quotation marks at all unless including a quotation within a quotation that appears within the body of the text.
e.g. Katie said, “Stop saying, ‘I told you so!’ it is driving me crazy.”
i. Scripture used in block quotations must be followed by the reference in parentheses (round brackets).
j. Titles of articles, chapters, and other shorter works are set in roman and enclosed in quotation marks. (The Chicago Manual of Style)
k. When quoted in text or listed in a bibliography, titles of books, journals, plays, and other freestanding works are italicized; titles of articles, chapters, and other shorter works are set in roman and enclosed in quotation marks.
l. Position of quotation marks relative to commas and periods.
(AmE) Periods are always placed inside quotation marks (even if a quotation is only a portion of the sentence).
e.g. The dog barked, “Woof, woof.”
e.g. The survey response said, “We always look forward to getting Japan Harvest in our mailbox.”
(BrE) Full stops are placed outside inverted commas unless a quotation stands by itself as a full sentence.
e.g. The dog barked, “Woof, woof”.
e.g. The survey response stated, “We always look forward to getting Japan Harvest in the post.”
Note: In some Commonwealth publications single quotations are used, however often double quotation marks are used just as in US English. Therefore Japan Harvest will uniformly use double quotation marks.