Disclaimer: I have kind of a typographical obsession and I probably find this a more interesting question than most anyone else. So if your immediate answer is just "this is the standard that's normal to me" or "I don't notice them and I don't care", that's totally understandable, please just disregard this thread. So my understanding is that in the US and Canada it's pretty much double quotes, and in Britain and Australia, it's typically single quotes. But I spent a lot of time agonising over the choice when I was young and thought it was completely up to me (although my understanding is that it's getting more flexible in some ways, at least over here). Anyway, I can't help getting a different feel from single vs. double quotes, and it's quite complicated. Singles strike me as more casual, but in a way also more proper because of all the classic English books I've read that use them. They also make dialogue feel closer to the text because they form slightly less of a barrier, even though it obviously doesn't change the meaning of anything. I still think of double as default, and kind of basic. In Australia early reading books often use double quotes for clarity, even though everything from tween lit up tends to be single, so there's something "Dick and Jane" about them in my own head. Yet somehow that's not always a bad thing, it's an interesting effect for me. I appreciate how clear they are compared to single quotes, that at first glance they're unambiguously not apostrophes. And you can see that I automatically use double quotes on the internet, even though I try to stick to British/Australian spellings. I don't think it'll ever not feel weird to use 'single quotes' in conversation, even though it's oddly appealing. But just look at that example, it's heretical. I've come to terms with the fact that Australians mostly use single quotes, and I'm kind of glad to let the decision be made for me, or I might still be tossing it up, since I like both styles for completely different reasons. Does anyone else have thoughts and feelings about the purely aesthetic difference of single vs. double? Does one appeal to you more than the other, and can you pinpoint why? Spoiler: Bonus question in case this just isn't that interesting! Does anyone not dislike the choice of em dashes for dialogue punctuation, a la Joyce and some other Irish authors? Or possibly not automatically dislike works which leave out dialogue punctuation entirely? I appreciate the near-universal complaint that this just makes reading harder than it needs to be, but is there something interesting about these choices anyway?
I adore this dissection. I have nothing worthy to add. I tend to (gasp) use both. Not in the same piece of course. Spoiler: Bonus answer I find I can get used to em dashes for dialogue, though I have no idea why I should have to. Completely absent dialogue punctuation? Utter pain in the arse.
Interesting. Are there typical reasons you pick one over the other? Does one or the other tend to feel right for the given story from the get-go?
It is interesting, and I'm not sure why I do it. It's not a conscious thing. If I did think about it I'd use single, and I thought most of my stuff would have used single. But when I checked a piece I put up here it has double, and so does my WIP. So I must use both. Hell, I'll have to track down something using single, I might be kidding myself... OK, on a random scan I had to go back to 2015 & 2014 to find single quotes. So I've swung into the doubles camp without even being aware. Interesting indeed.
I grew up in Canada. I use double quotes for dialogue - it just feels normal to me. I find the use of single quotes slightly jarring, to the point where I'm a bit apprehensive when I approach a book printed in Britain or somewhere else single quotes are used. As for starting dialogue with dashes: I think it's kind of cool. Joyce was the first writer I ever saw use them, but it's not strictly an Irish thing. Cormac McCarthy has used them, too.
As an American I'm definitely prejudiced in favor of doubles. I can clearly see that closing quote mark coming up out of the corner of my eye and change my reading pace / voice to slip back into the narrative. I do have a few books by Storm Constantine that make use of single quotes, and I find that often I have to backtrack a few words after a closing quote because it's so minuscule. Doesn't help that those particular books are written in the 1st person, so sometimes the narrative can sound convincingly like dialogue. As for the em-dashes, not something one really sees over this side of things, but my initial impression is no, not a fan. Complete lack of dialogue punctuation will depend on the writer. In writing from Latin America - like José Saramago - one sees it, but the writing isn't just anglophone writing sans quotes. When you're familiar with the story-telling style of Latin people and know that particular pace and flow, you realize that's how it's written so it's really not as hard as it first appears, but I do concede that it requires that bit of inculturation, otherwise I can see how it might take someone a while to get their sea legs under them, so to speak.
I use double quotes for dialogue, and single quotes for uses like your 'this is the standard that's normal to me' in your first paragraph. I've done that because that's the way I was taught to do it rather than any particular aesthetic preference. I remember reading that publishers will generally reverse that, as a hangover from the days when they did all their printing inhouse - dialogue was more common, so doing quotes that way round saved ink. Not sure how true that is, though. Bonus: I have no problem with either of those dialogue styles. The first one I think is just a different tag, I gather it's more commonly used in continental Europe. I used it once in a story where I alternated a story being told by a character with a story about the telling; using different dialogue tags was a way of helping the reader differentiate them in the text. The second one feels like more of an artistic choice. It makes the text read a bit differently, at least for me.
Everything I read about Latin American storytelling makes it sound like comes from a fascinating but quite different kind of mentality. It's hard to tell, since I'm ashamed to say I haven't actually read any, and I really want to change that. Could you suggest a good place to start?
Yeah, sure, José Saramago's Blindness is excellent. Saramago took the Nobel for literature in 1998. Blindness is Magic Realism in its fullest bloom without as much of the baroque floridness of García Márquez. Saramago has a more restrained, pragmatic hand.
Cheers for that. I should actually ask specifically while I think of it, since I'm gearing up to teach high school English lit and I'm realising I want to be able to dip into a broader range of cultures and contexts, whether you could recommend one or two things that are both literary and fairly accessible for a high school level. I've had trouble finding stuff outside of my realm of familiarity that's both really well-written and not overly challenging, since I'm likely to end up teaching some less confident readers.
I just always took the double ones for granted. Like an all around standard. I think the singles ones look a bit 'lonely'. Just look at them. Separated by that long word. Just imagine an entire sentence! To be honest I use double quotation-marks both in dialog and quotes and I'm note sure when I'd use the singles ones. A quote within a dialog? Though I did run and check out some books and you're right about the British once. I had forgot all about it, but now I remember thinking they looked off. Most English books I own are British, with some exceptions. Though double are standard in Sweden as well. Or the dashes. I hate dashes!
Yeah, that's the only conventionally accepted use of single quotes within a piece that uses double quotes for dialogue, since double quotes within double quotes are a big no. I have seen at least one author who used single quotes to write lines of thought, while dialogue was in double quotes, but I don't imagine many people would be very impressed with that stylistic idiosyncrasy. (I wasn't.)
I'm Aussie too, I use double quotes. I used single once, to see what it would look like. It looked yuck.
