style guide: italics and quotes

On the use of quote marks and italics I follow The Economist.

Here are the rules in general (details to follow):

1. Use quote marks:

• To quote what someone said word for word:

Bush said, “Read my lips: no new taxes.”

For a quote within a quote, use single quotes:

Then he said, “The last thing I heard her say was ‘I am going to Victoria’s.'”

• For the names of

• books: “Odyssey” (but not for holy books: Koran, Genesis, Tao-te-Ching)
• plays: “Romeo & Juliet”
• television shows: “Big Brother”
• films: “Casablanca”
• works of art: “Pieta”

2. Use italics:

• For foreign words: de jure, janjaweed, intifada
• For the names of

• newspapers: The Economist, The Times
• magazines: Newsweek
• ships: Titanic
• lawsuits: Roe v Wade

You can also use italics to draw attention to a word. But it is much better to express yourself so that you do not need italics. Especially if you are writing for the Web where italics are often lost when what you write is copied or moved. When I moved my blog from Blogger to WordPress everything in italics was turned into small letters!

Although The Economist puts books and television shows and so on in quotes, in books you will see them put in italics. That is fine. But whichever way you choose, stick to it.

According to The Economist only two newspapers have “The” in their name: The Economist and The Times (of London). The rest do not: the Daily Mirror, the New York Times and so on.

In lawsuits the “versus” can be written as a “v” without any point after it: Roe v Wade.

If you are quoting a long passage from a book or article, instead of putting it in quotes, set it off from the body of your writing this way:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

Make the letters smaller than your own writing. Do not put it in italics – they are hard to read for long.

Now to the most difficult part: does the punctuation go before or after the quote marks?

In general, if it was part of the original statement being quoted, then the punctuation goes inside the quote marks; otherwise it goes outside:

• Then Diana asked me, “So are you going back to her?”
• Did Diana really say, “Seth is a genius”?

In the first the question mark goes inside because Diana asked a question. In the second it goes outside because she did not – the person quoting her is – so it belongs on his side of the quote marks.

If you break up a quote by things like “he said”, then you put a comma at the break. The comma goes inside the quote if there was some punctuation at that point in the original statement, otherwise it goes outside:

• “I think we will stop here,” he said, “Then we can get something to eat.”
• “I think”, she said, “that you must go.”

That is the general idea. For more details see Hart’s rules.

See also:

• style guide
• style guide: names and capitalization
• style guide: commas
• style guide: punctuation