If you’ve ever wondered about the roles played by quotes in white papers, I can tell you as a professional white paper writer that quotations are a source of anxiety for many people. I’m not sure, but I think it results from (barely) surviving seventh-grade English and later learning plagiarism could get us tortured. Including … Read more
White papers quote experts for many reasons and doing so is often a good idea. There are a number of advantages to quoting experts in your white papers, including these: White papers quote experts internal and external You may have subject matter experts (SMEs) within your organization and quoting them within your white paper is … Read more
I don’t know whether to blame the Internet for something I’ve been seeing more of lately: the use of single quotation marks (‘) where double quotes (“) should be used.
Many issues related to punctuation are a matter of style, syntax, or personal preference. But the rules on quotation marks are pretty clear-cut.
Quotation marks are a very familiar punctuation device, and we’d have a tough time surviving without them. As a famous writer once said, “Quotation marks allow us to identify what someone actually says, as opposed to simple statements being made by the writer.” Actually, I just made that quote up, but it illustrates one of the primary roles of quotation marks. The other is to denote when something is being lifted from another source.
There’s a third use for quotation marks, and it’s not well-understood. It’s to imply that something isn’t really what you’re presenting it as. For example, if I wrote that a necklace was made from “silver” or “real” silver, I’m implying that it’s actually an imitation. If I said that a particular political candidate is “smart,” I’m suggesting that she’s dumber than that proverbial box of rocks.
Why do people choose to put so many things in quotation marks? I suspect that they believe wrapping a word or phrase in quotes somehow makes it more prominent or important, but it actually has the opposite effect.