Booher's Rules of Business Grammar - Dianna Booher 2009

Can you hear me now?
Punctuation problems

INDIRECT QUOTATIONS

You’ve heard them referred to as “he said/she said” situations, meaning that nobody can prove anything; it’s just one person’s word against the other’s. You could label this situation with quotation marks the same way: If you don’t use them correctly, the reader can’t separate what was actually spoken from hearsay—that is, your own synthesis, interpretation, and conclusions about the other person’s comments.

In short, quotation marks carry clout.

Incorrect:

Trixy says that she “hates her job and plans to resign at the end of the year whether she has another job offer or not.” (The writer here is only summarizing what Trixy said—and he may or may not have interpreted her comments correctly.)

Correct:

Trixy said, “I hate my job. I’m resigning at the end of the year whether I have another job offer or not!” (These are Trixy’s exact words.)

Here’s what causes confusion: Occasionally, you want to quote just a word or phrase from the speaker, and you want to make sure that your reader knows that the original speaker used that exact phrasing—even if you’ve just summarized the rest of the comment. That’s when you may add quotation marks around only a few words of the complete statement:

Trixy’s dissatisfaction here goes beyond boredom. She said that she actually “hated” her job.

Another example:

Actually, our manager likes the “take-no-prisoners attitude on the trade floor” that he often mentions to the sales team; he thinks it intimidates our competitors during the convention.

Remember: If you’re going to write someone’s actual words, put them in quotation marks. If you’re just going to summarize, don’t.

Memory tip

Quotation marks are for scriptwriters and the movies: If you can hear it, enclose it.