Quote-Contents-Unquote

When do you use quotation marks, how many, and where? Forget the “rules” you were fed in school. Many options are available to suit the inventive writer.

Standard/Normal/Ho-hum maybe:
Double quote-dialog-double unquote — “What do you mean, choice?” you ask. (New paragraph) “You have options,” I say.

Standard/Normal/Ho-hum quote within a quote — “Someone will tell you ‘Listen to me,’ and you have to listen.’’

Standard/Normal/Ho-hum quote that is not dialog — The word you want is “choice”. (punctuation outside the mark) 

British/Normal/Ho-hum:
Single quote-dialog-single unquote — ‘You Brits do it this way.’ (New paragraph) ‘Yes. Neah, neah, neah, U.S.’

Creative:
Eliminate quotation marks — What do you mean, choice? I'm suggesting options to you.

Creative:
(You decide how to handle dialog quotations. I’m waiting to hear your ideas.)

Looking for Rules?

Why do some writers keep asking, “Where’s the rule for... ?” as if there were some magical place full of “the rules for writers — grammatical, syntaxical, literarial, spellical, and stylical”?

Listen up: many people offer GUIDELINES; however, there are no “rules” — not in the U.S.! We have a wonderful one-of-a-kind language set-up, based on English (and German and French and Spanish and Italian and...). A writer needs to look at all the GUIDELINES, choose their preferences (just like on computer sites) and WRITE! The best advice you’ll ever get:

Question “rules”
 Notes your preferences in Your Style Manual
Be Consistent
and WRITE!

Everything You Know Is Wrong

Today we get philosophical. While the above is an interesting statement to contemplate, add two words: “Every... (but one) ...thing you know is wrong.” Where would you begin to look for the exception? In grammar, you would have to question everything until you find that one “right” thing. And I haven't found it yet!

Who Said???

Keep asking these questions: who writes this? who says I can’t? who said I should? (that last one really gets me burning! I cannot listen to talk radio because I keep asking, “How do you know what you’re saying?” I want to hear from people who know — and there’s the rub! When you are unable to identify the source of information, look at it with jaundiced eye (I love that word “jaundiced”; it’s so yellow!), and continue to write with your own words.