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Quotation mark

Punctuation mark with various forms

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History

The single quotation mark is traced to Ancient Greek practice, adopted and adapted by monastic copyists. Isidore of Seville, in his seventh-century encyclopedia, Etymologiae, described their use of the Greek diplé, a symbol like a right angle bracket:

[13] ⟩ Diple. Hanc scriptores nostri adponunt in libris ecclesiasticorum virorum ad separanda vel [ad] demonstranda testimonia sanctarum Scripturarum.

Translation:

[13] ⟩ Diplé. Our copyists place this sign in the books of the people of the Church, to separate or to indicate the quotations drawn from the Holy Scriptures.

The double quotation mark derives from a marginal notation used in fifteenth-century manuscript annotations to indicate a passage of particular importance (not necessarily a quotation); the notation was placed in the outside margin of the page and was repeated alongside each line of the passage. In his edition of the works of Aristotle, which appeared in 1483 or 1484, the Milanese Renaissance humanist Francesco Filelfo marked literal and appropriate quotes with oblique double dashes on the left margin of each line. Until then, literal quotations had been highlighted or not at the author's discretion. Non-verbal loans were marked on the edge. After the publication of Filelfo's edition, the quotation marks for literal quotations prevailed. During the seventeenth century this treatment became specific to quoted material, and it grew common, especially in Britain, to print quotation marks (now in the modern opening and closing forms) at the beginning and end of the quotation as well as in the margin; the French usage is a remnant of this. In most other languages, including English, the marginal marks dropped out of use in the last years of the eighteenth century. The usage of a pair of marks, opening and closing, at the level of lower case letters was generalized.

By the nineteenth century, the design and usage began to be specific to each region. In Western Europe the custom became to use the quotation mark pairs with the convexity of each mark aimed outward. In Britain those marks were elevated to the same height as the top of capital letters: “...”.

In France, by the end of the nineteenth century, the marks were modified to an angular shape. Some authors claim that the reason for this was a practical one, in order to get a character that was clearly distinguishable from apostrophes, commas, and parentheses. Also, in other scripts, the angular quotation marks are distinguishable from other punctuation characters: the Greek breathing marks, the Armenian emphasis and apostrophe, the Arabic comma, the decimal separator, the thousands separator, etc. Other authors claim that the reason for this was an aesthetic one: the elevated quotation marks created extra white space before and after the word, below the quotation marks. This was considered aesthetically unpleasing, while the in-line quotation marks helped to maintain the typographical color, since the quotation marks had the same height and were aligned with the lower case letters. Nevertheless, while other languages do not insert spaces between the quotation marks and the word(s) quoted, the French usage does insert them, even if they are narrow spaces.

The curved quotation marks ("66–99") usage, “...”, was exported to some non-Latin scripts, notably where there was some English influence, for instance in Native American scripts and Indic scripts. On the other hand, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic and Ethiopic adopted the French "angular" quotation marks, «...». The angle bracket quotation marks, 《...》, are also a development of the in-line angular quotation marks. These marks are standard in the Hanzi (Chinese 汉字), Hanja (Korean 漢字), and modern Hangul (Korean 한글) scripts. In Chinese, they serve as the standard punctuation for book, album, and other work titles. In South Korea, they are recognized as valid punctuation for indicating such titles. In North Korea, they serve as the standard punctuation for book, album, and other work titles.

In Central Europe, the practice was to use the quotation mark pairs with the convexity aimed inward. The German tradition preferred the curved quotation marks, the first one at the level of the commas, the second one at the level of the apostrophes: „...“. Alternatively, these marks could be angular and in-line with lower case letters, but still pointing inward: »...«. Some neighboring regions adopted the German curved marks tradition with lower–upper alignment, while some, e.g. Poland, adopted a variant with the convexity of the closing mark aimed rightward like the opening one, „...”.

Sweden (and Finland) chose a convention where the convexity of both marks was aimed to the right but lined up both at the top level: ”...”.

In Eastern Europe, there was hesitation between the French tradition «...» and the German tradition „...“. The French tradition prevailed in Eastern Europe (Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus), whereas the German tradition, or its modified version with the convexity of the closing mark aimed rightward, has become dominant in Southeastern Europe, e.g. in the Balkan countries. In Romania the: „...” version is officially recognized by the Romanian Academy.

In some languages using the angular quotation marks, the usage of the single guillemet, ‹...›, became obsolete, being replaced by double curved ones: “...”, though the single ones still survive, for instance, in Switzerland. In Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, the curved quotation marks, „...“, are used as a secondary level or in handwriting, while the angular marks, «...», are used as the primary level on printed text.

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