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Old 06-03-2025, 10:42 AM   #1
Lukusaukko
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Double quotes vs single quotes in British usage

I started reading an ebook published by a UK company, written by a British author and had been reading it a while, when I realised it uses the US style of quoting - double quotes to start and finish dialogue, single quotes for quotations inside the dialogue. Spelling is all British, though.

Most books where I've paid any attention to this (for example, Pratchett) tend to use the British style if published by a UK company, US style if by US company, so I started wondering how common this mixed style is these days? I've heard people not used to the British style call it confusing (with the apostrophes and closing quotation marks being the same thing, or maybe they're more used to the US style), so maybe this is a way of making the book more appealing to an international audience without messing with the spelling?
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Old 06-03-2025, 12:57 PM   #2
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UK has always used either (probably since printing started, but certainly some UK Victorian works), it's just the single quote dialogue is more common. It's not decided by the author unless self-published. It varies by time period and publisher. Irish publishers historically more often used double quotes for punctuation of dialogue. Non-dialogue such as a title might use italics or single quotes.

One British printer wanted to use the German system of lowered and raised quotes.

Other languages use other systems.

The use of en-dashes ‘ – ’ with a space for an aside but em-dash ‘—’ for cut-off is pretty universal in times and publishers in UK & Ireland. The USA mostly uses em-dash ‘—’ for asides (with no spaces) and cut-off speech.

The " and ' are not ever used in proper printing but compromises for typewriters. Often they only had O for O and 0 and I (small L) for 1.

Also wordprocessors, so now some books wrongly put ” and ’ for double prime ″ and single prime ′ marks which are for minutes (time or 1/60ths of a degree) and hours, or inches and feet.
Note your wordprocessor often incorrectly does a single opening quote ‘ (from you typing ') on ’90s or ’tis which are apostrophes.
Another mistake is people using the ` key as an opening quote, it should be a dead or combining key for à è ì ò ù etc. Which is usually is on Linux and is on MS Windows International layouts.
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Old 06-03-2025, 01:23 PM   #3
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I've always thought it was clear-cut, with one style being consistently used in the UK and the other in the US, and that also seems to be what many online style guides claim - which is why this particular case stood out. With dashes (and ellipses) it seems the recommendations are more lenient, as long as you choose one style and stick to it consistently throughout.

Interesting tidbits, and makes sense - there are very few things people or countries can agree on and be consistent about...
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Old 06-03-2025, 03:07 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lukusaukko View Post
I've always thought it was clear-cut, with one style being consistently used in the UK and the other in the US, and that also seems to be what many online style guides claim - which is why this particular case stood out. With dashes (and ellipses) it seems the recommendations are more lenient, as long as you choose one style and stick to it consistently throughout.

Interesting tidbits, and makes sense - there are very few things people or countries can agree on and be consistent about...
Nope, not that clear cut. I can pretty well guarantee that I can find examples of UK books with proper em-dashes on my bookshelves if I look. Ebooks too. Likewise for UK books that use US-style quotation marks, even though spellings are UK-style. For that matter, one can find US authored and published books with British spellings sprinkled about for no apparent reason, though this is mostly older books.

As far as I can tell, there's exceptions to everything when it comes to books and punctuation style, and publishers do as they will do.

Like, it's generally not considered great typography for a print book to leave a mid-sentence em-dash at the front of a line, or a mid-sentence ellipse either, right? Yet, I've got a 1940s book I was reading recently (print) and I saw lines exactly like that fairly frequently. There's no ebook, but if there were, it'd fit right in.

Last edited by graycyn; 06-03-2025 at 03:12 PM. Reason: Added sentence.
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Old 06-04-2025, 12:31 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lukusaukko View Post
I've always thought it was clear-cut, with one style being consistently used in the UK and the other in the US, and that also seems to be what many online style guides claim - which is why this particular case stood out. With dashes (and ellipses) it seems the recommendations are more lenient, as long as you choose one style and stick to it consistently throughout.

Interesting tidbits, and makes sense - there are very few things people or countries can agree on and be consistent about...
No, it's down to what a publisher decides and they change.

As graycyn writes, sometimes UK uses USA style for asides, though they almost always use em dash for cut-off dialogue.

USA spelling and punctuation is more prescriptive. There are more valid alternate spelling in English in Ireland & UK. The OED reflects usage. The original USA dictionary by Webster even ignored usage and promoted his own ideas.

Consistency in a work (novel, paper etc) is important. Thus for writing I have deleted alternate valid spellings to have just our preferred spelling (e.g. nosey and nosy are both correct, some words can be -ize or -ise in British English).
There are also plenty of words where USA versus most of the rest of the world has a different meaning for the same word, not just using a different word for the same thing.

Last edited by Quoth; 06-04-2025 at 12:39 PM.
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Old 06-04-2025, 12:43 PM   #6
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Oh the ellipse … It's a style minefield and has actually two common uses in a novel. Also in technical books it's preferred for a range rather than a hyphen or other dash:
67 - 102 vs 67 … 102.
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