Booher's Rules of Business Grammar - Dianna Booher 2009

Spare tires
Punctuation problems

SINGLE QUOTATION MARKS

Think of single quotation marks as you would spare tires for your car. You don’t routinely drive your car on a spare tire. Typically, your spare tire is of lower quality than the regular set. You use it only in case of emergency, like a blowout. As soon as you get to a service station, you get the blowout repaired and return the spare to your trunk.

That’s the idea behind the use of single quotation marks. They’re used only in emergencies—when the sentence or passage already has quotation marks around it.

Incorrect:

Beulah has ’fine-tuned’ her approach to performance appraisals.

Hortense told the committee: ’My job is secure.’

Correct:

Beulah has “fine-tuned” her approach to performance appraisals.

Hortense told the committee: “My job is secure.”

Single quotation marks are correct only when they are used inside double quotation marks.

Correct:

Their key manager provided us very little detail in responding to the client’s Request for Proposal #4562l. The client’s e-mail stated only, “Your bid ’whether submitted by e-mail, uploaded to our Web site, or faxed’ must include all assigned consultants, along with a list of their advanced degrees.” (The part in single quotations is being quoted exactly from the Request for Proposal document.)

I told my staff this morning, “Ebeneezer e-mailed me that he had become a ’glorified beach bum’ since his retirement.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, attorneys “are confused and angry over this Supreme Court ruling and fear ’catastrophic change’ is another scare tactic of terrorist groups working behind the scenes to control our court systems.”

Memory tip

Use single quotation marks as you would spare tires—when the double marks are unavailable (already in use).