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The Quotation Mark ( " " quotation marks )

How to use quotation marks correctly

The quotation mark is used when speech is reported or when the original words of another text are quoted See the glossary definition . The quotation mark is also used for titles and to indicate that a word or phrase is used in a special way. They always come in pairs, enclosing the quoted text.

  1. Quoted text

    • Here’s how the ancient Greek mathematician Metrodorus (400-350 B.C.) put it: A universe where Earth is opening quotation markthe only world,words quotedclosing quotation mark he said, is about as believable as a opening quotation marklarge field containing a single stalk.words quotedclosing quotation mark
    • About 2,000 years later, in the 16th century, the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno suggested something similar. opening quotation markCountless suns and countless earthswords quotedclosing quotation mark existed elsewhere, he said, all rotating opening quotation markround their suns in exactly the same way as the planets of our system.words quotedclosing quotation mark
    • Does this imply that a noisy computer can be creative? Alan Turing, pioneer of the general-purpose computing machine, believed this was possible, suggesting that opening quotation markif a machine is expected to be infallible then it cannot also be intelligentwords quotedclosing quotation mark.

  2. Titles

    • And it is different to the martial art form known as opening quotation markTai Chi Chuantitle of the martial artclosing quotation mark or opening quotation markTaijiquanalternative title of the martial artclosing quotation mark. Tai chi is a opening quotation markmind-body exercisea 'technical' termclosing quotation mark.
    • While the meat and cheese on your pizza also get brown, this is due to a different process called the opening quotation markMaillard reaction,the title of the processclosing quotation mark which is named after French chemist Louis-Camille Maillard.

  3. Special Uses

    • When light hits one one of these little balls of water, the light can change direction. We call this opening quotation markrefractionthis is the the name of the described process - it is in quotation marks to highlight the name of this processclosing quotation mark.
    • Impact craters are relatively shallow, so these opening quotation markdents'dent' is a word usually used to describe a small shallow dip in a surface so here it is used in quotation marks because the crater is obviously much much largerclosing quotation mark in Earth’s rocky crust (the surface bit we can see with our eyes) can be easily buried or wiped out by erosion.
    • Each seashell is a unique shape. Hollow and curved ones can opening quotation markcatchusually we 'catch' something physical so here 'catch' is used in a special way maybe to indicate that sound of the sea has entered the shellclosing quotation mark some of the sounds around you. That’s when sound enters the opening of the shell.
    • Gravitational waves have given us new eyes to our Universe, allowing us to opening quotation markseewe can't actually see gravitational waves but we can use them to detect black holes and neutron stars - so 'see' is placed in quotation marks to indicate this special use of the wordclosing quotation mark things like black holes and neutron stars crashing together – because we can finally detect the tiny ripples they create.


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