How to use quotation marks without “putting on airs”

The main use for quotation marks, of course, is to differentiate quotations and previously published material from an author’s original text. (When citing text that is three lines or longer, however, the standard convention is to offset and indent the excerpt without using quotation marks.)

Quotation marks also are used when referring to a word or phrase as the word or phrase itself and not what it means. For example:

USAID does not like its contractors to use the title “commercial sex workers” when referring to women who have sex for money because it believes the phrase destigmatizes the profession.

As for punctuation, periods and commas go inside the closing quotation mark regardless of whether or not they are part of the original quote. Unless they are in the text being quoted, however, colons, semicolons, question marks, and exclamation points belong outside of the closing quotation mark.

(Those rules for punctuation are for American English; in British style only punctuation that is part of the original quote goes inside the quotation marks. Yes, British style makes a lot more sense. But my website stats show that you probably aren’t British, so you’re stuck having to abide by the confusing and illogical American way.)

If a footnote or endnote accompanies the text, the reference number goes outside of the closing quotation mark.

And only use single quotation marks if text within a quotation needs a quotation mark.

Steve started to get jittery. He had just overheard his mom tell his dad, “And then Danny ran in and told me ‘Steve said a word you shouldn’t say.’”

Finally, do not use quotation marks for colloquialisms or buzzwords. According to The Elements of Style, “To do so is to put on airs, as though you were inviting the reader to join you in a select society of those who know better.” And no one wants to be thought of as “putting on airs.”

Bibliographies and reference lists made easy (I hope)

The two aspects of editing I enjoy the most are learning about the subject I’m reading about and constantly improving my own English as I do so.

Notice I didn’t include formatting reference lists. That work, however, is time consuming and, hence, pays well. Yet I’ll gladly give up the billable hours for papers that have the reference lists formatted correctly.

Welcome EasyBib, a free automatic bibliography composer. And if you’ve got money to spend and want a supposedly better version, there’s Endnote.

I haven’t tried either application yet, but will report back after doing so. Using them will make my job easier and save my clients money (although it’d save them even more money if they bought the software themselves).