Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
i have read books with single quotes for speech. But the double quotes are the ones that should be used as they look correct.
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It’s what you are used to, so it looks more correct. “I prefer it as it’s less confusing with apostrophes”.
The UK uses both schemes depending on era and publisher. Mostly Ireland used the double quote. The " and ' came in with typewriters, extended to teletype in 1928, which almost unchanged in style were used on computers till late 1970s and thus the IBM PC keyboard layout is based on a 19th Century mechanism.
Sadly wordprocessors still get various so called smart quotes wrong and Publishers don't seem to check. Such as ’tis, ’80s and —” are often ‘ and “. Also now only older stuff has prime and double prime as in 5′ 4″ (feet, inches or minutes, seconds).
EDIT:
And languages other than English have other systems, which is better than overloading the poor ’ symbol.
«Alors!»
I don't know how to type the German and other ones that are similar.