Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
How far back are you going, Harry? That 1943 Bulldog Drummond example was using double-quotes, and I have a 1927 Beau Geste that uses double-quotes. (The latter is technically an Australian edition, but I would have expected it to follow the UK source from which it was produced.) I haven't checked all my old hard-covers, but it seems to me that "universally" could be a bit strong.
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Yes, saying "universal" was a bit strong. Let me rephrase it and say that the overwhelming
majority of books published in the UK prefer to use single quotes for dialogue. I've just looked at a dozen British books in my own collection, picked at random, from Dickens to Tolkien to J.K. Rowling to Stephen Baxter, and they all use single quotes.