Is there a name for this?

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'd call it "getting your punctuation wrong".

In today's usage you are probably right but when I went to primary school (age 8-11) in the late 1950's it was the kind of punctuaion that my UK school taught. Any deviation from it and your marks were reduced.

We were told to use double quotation marks (single marks were never used) for book/film tiles and direct speech. If I wrote a passage today using the punctuation I was taught, it would be ludicrously over punctuated by today's standards.

I think one of the reasons why this was done is that most people then wrote things by hand and it helped make handwriting clearer. There were no word processors and typewriters were very expensive and most people did not own one.

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by barryem

I think Cinisajoy has it right. Not only do rules change but we've just gone through a century or two where rules became more rigid. Linguists like to say that grammar is descriptive, not prescriptive. When I was a kid learning grammar my teachers would have kicked me out of school for suggesting that. Of course I hadn't heard about that then either.

Today we like to think of the right way to write things but in earlier times the right way wasn't so important. I think in the past couple of decades we've begun to move away from that rigid way of looking at things.


Barry

You are correct if you are talking about much earlier times but from my researches by at least the 1920s, in the UK being able to use correct and punctuation were considered very important by schools. The punctuation taught then and up to the 1960s was considered to be the one and only correct form any deviation from it my my school and the marks (grade) you got would be reduced.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by cromag

I would describe it as a Paraphrase, but I've never seen it in quotation marks before.

From: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/619/1/




Since she is summarizing from several uncles it's easier to paraphrase them (summing up all of their sentiments in a single quote) than to exactly quote each uncle.

Thanks, but in the book it's a three way conversation with the protagonist and two of his uncles. I don't think Charlotte Brontë meant to summarise.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

I've also seen it before, but often with the phrase in italics, or single quotes a few times, but never in double quotes.

When I was search for source code for the ebook I saw versions with single quotes and versions with double quotes.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'd call it "getting your punctuation wrong".

My punctuation, or Miss Brontë's?

How would you put it if you were doing the ebook?

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by HarryT

A good point, Mike. Alex, does the rest of the book use single or double quotes for direct speech?

Double, in the source I'm using from the University of Adelaide ebook library. But it's single in the Oxford Press version. I really don't think that makes much difference; to me the concern is that she was paraphrasing or giving the meaning within quotation marks.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by curtw

for me, this technique invokes a mental image of the storytelling of Micheal Peña (Luis) in Ant-Man. If you've seen the movie, you know what I mean. The character is clearly paraphrasing, but the voiceover is accompanied by an image of the original characters speaking the pharaphrased words. So I'd view the Bronte passage as subtly humorous, which I hope was her intent.

I don't think so. The Professor, in my opinion anyway, is not remotely humourous; it is full of suffering and injustice so far. I'll have to think about your suggestion.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

I don't know if there is a name for it, but I see paraphrases put in quotes like this quite frequently in 19th century books. I personally think of it as similar to our current usage of the curled fingers while speaking to indicate a humorous (if not sarcastic) "quote-quote".

Incidentally, I have worked with quite a few 19th and early 20th century books from UK publishers that do indeed use double quotation marks. I think HarryT pointed out somewhere, somewhen, that the standard British usage of Single Quotes did not really take over until after World War I.

Sarcastic would fit.

I've seen pdfs of 19th century books by the same publisher using double quotes in some books and single quotes in others. I really don't care much myself whether it's single or double.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Thasaidon

In today's usage you are probably right but when I went to primary school (age 8-11) in the late 1950's it was the kind of punctuaion that my UK school taught. Any deviation from it and your marks were reduced.

We were told to use double quotation marks (single marks were never used) for book/film tiles and direct speech. If I wrote a passage today using the punctuation I was taught, it would be ludicrously over punctuated by today's standards.

But this isn't direct speech, that's the whole point.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

My punctuation, or Miss Brontë's?

How would you put it if you were doing the ebook?

Brontë's. And I would of course do what you've done, because it's in the original.

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But this isn't direct speech, that's the whole point.

I did not say it was. Double quotes are used for other things besides direct speech and I do not remember seeing single quotes used until I was older and that was probably in an American SF pb.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Thasaidon

I did not say it was. Double quotes are used for other things besides direct speech and I do not remember seeing single quotes used until I was older and that was probably in an American SF pb.

Are you suggesting that these are quotation marks used for emphasis, rather than to indicate direct speech?

[GibbinR]

Reverting to the subject of Alex's original post, it seems to me that what we have is simply some indirect speech punctuated in a way that is not now done.
- The novel was written in 1846 when maybe punctuation conventions were not quite as fixed as they are now.
- The 'Note on the Text' in my own copy of 'The Professor' (Penguin Classics 1989), specifically refers to Charlotte Bronte's 'somewhat idiosyncratic punctuation'.

I have an irritating feeling that I have seen another example of this in another novel from the period, but haven't managed to remember anything concrete enough to check.

[latepaul]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Double, in the source I'm using from the University of Adelaide ebook library. But it's single in the Oxford Press version. I really don't think that makes much difference; to me the concern is that she was paraphrasing or giving the meaning within quotation marks.

Actually it may make a difference:

Sometimes, in quoting from another, we wish for convenience to give only the substance of his meaning, but not his exact words. In such a case, we may show that the wording has been thus altered, by using only one inverted comma and one apostrophe, instead of two. Thus: The last six commandments are, 'Honor thy father and thy mother, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet.' Unless we indicate in this way, or by express remark, that the phraseology has been altered, we should in quoting be careful to give the exact words of the author, especially where the quotation is from Holy Scripture. Any alteration whatever in the words inclosed in quotation marks is regarded as dishonest, unless in some manner we distinctly indicate that such alteration has been made.

- A Manual of Composition and Rhetoric, John Seely Hart, 1871

Found with a little searching on Google Books. Of course the above is talking about non-fiction, but I think a similar principle could apply to indirect speech in a novel.

From an earlier book it seems like a lot of punctuation was originally focussed on how something was to be read, emphasis on how many 'beats' for a comma versus a semi-colon and period* and such-like.

(*one, two and four apparently)

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

In the first few lines of the first chapter of The Professor by Charlotte Brontë there is the following passage:

When I had declined my uncles' offers they asked me "What I intended to do?" I said I should reflect. They reminded me that I had no fortune, and no expectation of any, and, after a considerable pause, Lord Tynedale demanded sternly, "Whether I had thoughts of following my father's steps and engaging in trade?"

The words between the quotation marks are obviously not the actual words the speaker said; they are the meaning of what the speaker said. But the words are within quotations marks. I think that Charlotte Brontë used this 'technique' much more often than Elizabeth Gaskell or Harriet Martineau did. If I wanted to test this hypothesis by counting, what would I be counting? Is there a name for putting a speaker's meaning in quotations marks rather than the actual words the speaker would have said?

And why would a writer do it anyway? The words would convey exactly the same meaning if the quotation and question marks were left out.

I don't believe there is any particular name for the practice but it is still accepted punctuation. It is accepted when the words are not exact quotations, especially, but not necessarily, when the writer distances themselves from or disowns what is said (in which case the punctuation is commonly called a scare quote).

So referring to your quotation, while the single quotes clearly indicate that the quotes are not exact I think there may also be the intent to also recognise that the narrator disowns, at least to some extent, what is said as in both cases the narrator comments in the negative in the immediately following sentence; referring to them as scare quotes is probably then justified.

So there are at least two reasons why they were used.

Also, while it is not uncommon for people to think that there are strict rules for punctuation, the fact is that a considerable amount of flexibility due to personal preference is allowed as long as it does not become a free for all. My personal view is that great writers (although Brontë was not recognised as a great writer when she wrote "The Professor" - my use of quotes there just to annoy the purists who would demand italics today ) have considerably more freedom than the rest of us and their sometimes unconventional or uncommon usage can add a lot of interest to their prose, either to the pace of it or in the way what is written is interpreted. So this freedom may be another reason she punctuated as she did.

Perhaps Brontë wanted to make the interpretation clear in that the quotes were both not exact and also did not have her agreement. But perhaps she was not that sophisticated when she wrote the book (it being her first novel) or maybe one is just reading too much into it by thinking that was her intention.