Chicago Style Workout 67: Quotation Marks

A curly-haired toy poodle sits on shag carpeting next to the quoted words "Curly quotes are smart."

You Can Quote Us on That

Quotation marks, or “quotes” for short, like to work in pairs. But they’re not all the same. They can be double or single, left or right, curly or straight. Part of an editor’s job is to know which marks to use in which context—and to make sure they’ve been used consistently.

To test your knowledge of these indispensable little marks—and to learn more about them—take the quiz.

Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual (cited in most of the answers). (For a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online, click here.)

Note: Style guides sometimes disagree. Except for a few details that can be verified in standard dictionaries and encyclopedias and other readily available sources, the answers in this quiz rely on the information in the 17th edition of CMOS.

Chicago Style Workout 67: Quotation Marks

1. What makes “smart” quotation marks (also called “smart quotes”) smart?
2. How many different commonly used quotation marks are there in English?
3. In Chicago style, periods and commas usually precede a closing quotation mark.
4. When a single quotation mark appears immediately next to a double quotation mark,
5. In Chicago style, a double quotation mark may be used to mean
6. In Chicago style, italics and quotation marks are sometimes interchangeable.
7. I said no.
8. Quotation marks are sometimes referred to as inverted commas.
9. In modern British style, quotation marks are usually
10. French quotation marks—« »—are normally called

 

Curly-haired poodle by Mohit / Adobe Stock.

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