Andrew Heisel’s Lexicon Valley article last year on single versus double quotation marks piqued the interest of Keith Houston, author of Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and ...

I don’t remember when I first learned about single quotation marks, but I have a vague memory of assuming they were as useful as quotation marks, or close to it. Sometimes you quote someone. Sometimes ...

Our language needs quotation marks. Without them, we couldn't know who said what to whom or even what they meant. Unfortunately, using them can prove tricky. Quotations marks appear in both double and ...

A few years ago while copy editing an article, I was shocked to see something like this: “I lecture my sales staff about what I call ‘me syndrome,’” Jones said. What shocked me was the punctuation.

Someone says something brilliant. It’s so clever that it gets shared and many people come to hear about it. When it’s shared, this is how it’s done. Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, And all ...

How to use single and double quotation marks in strings? In all programming languages, you must open and close your string with quotation marks, but you don't have to, if your interpreter doesn't ...

Quotation of the Day for Thursday, May 21, 2026. Quotation of the Day for Wednesday, May 20, 2026. Quotation of the Day for Tuesday, May 19, 2026. Quotation of the Day for Monday, May 18, 2026.

This is the Grammar Guy column, a weekly feature written by Curtis Honeycutt. I can think of a few things off the top of my head that I hope never to use: math, a fire extinguisher, Pepto Bismol and ...