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Hugh_Jeggs ,

I don't get the "Someone British is talking" bit

We only use the singular ' to indicate speech within speech -

John said, "I was just speaking to Charlie, and he said 'It's not often XKCD gets things wrong', and I agreed".

I could be wrong but that's what I was taught

sundray ,
@sundray@lemmus.org avatar

The use of quotation marks, also called inverted commas, is very slightly complicated by the fact that there are two types: single quotes (` ') and double quotes (" "). As a general rule, British usage has in the past usually preferred single quotes for ordinary use, but double quotes are now increasingly common; American usage has always preferred double quotes.

Hugh_Jeggs ,

British English often uses single quotation marks to identify the outermost text of a primary quotation versus double quotation marks for inner, nested quotations.

From wiki

Huh, just shows you how I was taught the British way many years ago, but adopted the American way due to reading so many bloody books!

Codandchips ,
@Codandchips@lemmy.world avatar

Old British person here, I was always taught double quotation marks for speech and single quotation marks for actually quoting something.

deo ,

Pull out your closest volume of Lord of the Rings and take a look. My copy at least has single-quotes for the speech text and double-quotes are used for nested speech. I guess it might be up to the publisher (eg: my copy of Harry Potter has been "Americanized" and thus uses double-quotes for the first level of speech text), but every copy of LotR i've run across uses single-quotes.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In ,

I heard somewhere it was to save ink.

Maybe they were pulling my leg.

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