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Section 8.8

Quotation Marks

Unless the documentation style you are following specifies otherwise, use quotation marks (1) to enclose the names of articles, short reports, and other brief documents cited in your document or (2) to indicate direct quotations of speech or excerpts from other documents. Do not put quotation marks around a quotation in block form (that is, indented to set it off from the main text). Avoid using quotation marks for emphasis.


To Enclose the Names of Articles, Short Reports, and Other Brief Documents

The source of the design information is the 1982 article "Boundary Layer Development on Turbine Airfoil Suction Surfaces," which appeared in the Journal of Engineering for Power.

To Indicate Direct Quotations of Speech or Excerpts from Other Documents

As Vorhees has stated, "Simple adjustment of the control-gate voltages, Va and Vb, enables us to realize any phase between 0 and [p] relative to the state phase, q."


Place periods and commas inside quotation marks; place semicolons and colons outside. Question marks (?) and exclamation marks (!) go inside the quotation marks if they are part of the material quoted and outside the quotation marks if they are not.


Lightman begins his survey of the development of cosmological theories by posing questions such as "Has the universe existed forever?"

What did Oppenheimer mean when, after the first atomic explosion, he said, "We thought of the legend of Prometheus"?


For a quotation within a quotation, use single quotation marks unless the main quotation is in block form; if the main quotation is in block form, use double quotation marks for the quotation within it.


Rimmer notes that Bohr "scolded his distinguished colleague finally in Einstein's own terms 'God does not throw dice. Nor is it our business to prescribe to God how he should run the world.'"


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