Photo credit: Word Crimes by Weird Al Yankovik

Quotation marks are simple to master. The trick is to always use double quotation marks when you are directly quoting someone. Wait, you’re thinking. Some people use single quotation marks, and that’s true—in the United Kingdom. Since we are in Canada, we should use double quotation marks.

For our purposes, only use the single variety for quotes within quotes. For example:

Mark said, “Jared came to my desk and whispered, ‘There are brownies in the lunch room.’”

Because we use Canadian English, place punctuation inside the quotation marks, not outside.

Never use quotation marks for emphasis or common words and phrases. Only use quotation marks for terms that are unfamiliar, and only for the first reference of that term.