Correct use of speech marks for manuscript?

[I, Brian]

A little detal I'm uncertain of - what form of speech marks to use in a manuscript?

According to Wikipedia on the issue, Word is normally using "neutral quotation marks" in a manuscript:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark

However, most of the books I've done a quite quick on are using single quotation marks.

Would be a lot of work to replace the neutral with single.

Question is, do I really need to be concerned about this?

[The Judge]

Are you worried about the double/single split -- or the straight/curly split most?

In the UK it's mainly single, and in the US double. I've never worried about the difference between straight and curly.

I think it's probably one of those things that we worry about more than the agents do. After all, if they love your work they won't turn it down because you've used the wrong marks. They might ask you to reformat before they send it to publishers, in case it makes a difference when it's edited there, but at that stage you won't mind the extra work!

[iansales]

In the UK, most books are published with single quote marks; and in the US they use double quotes. However, books published in the UK from US masters rarely bother to change from double to single.

Having said that, it's standard practice to use double quotes in manuscripts.

[Hex]

Anne Lyle said something interesting about this somewhere (but I'm afraid I can't find where). I think -- and apologies if I misunderstood -- she said she's using double quotation marks as she writes just now because then it's really easy to find them. Otherwise, I suppose, you'd risk them getting mixed up with apostrophes. So I'm copying her and using doubles to write, and then it'll be really straightforward if I decide to make them into singles...

Edit: which, based on what Ian just said, I won't be.

The only reason to worry about the straight/ curly distinction that I've encountered is that curly can do odd things when taken out of Word (they start showing as weird question marks etc).

[AMB]

Heh, I changed from single to double because of Anne as well.

It was in this thread: (More) dialogue punctuation questions

[Dozmonic]

Don't fret it, it's a small thing. The work won't be rejected on the basis of it and it's something they can change going forward in a matter of moments.

[Ursa major]

I changed to double quotes for first-level dialogue, although it wasn't a matter of moments (which suggests a quick search-and-replace). Apart from making sure apostrophes aren't altered, there's second level-dialogue (i.e. dialogue quoted within dialogue) to consider, which has to be changed from double quotes to single, e.g.

'He said, "No."'

would have to be changed to:

"He said, 'No.'"

[Leisha]

Just to add my 2p to this topic - I've switched between double and single over the years, but now I'm a firm believer in single because I can't be bothered to change it any more (Ursa's right; there's the quote-within-quotes to consider). Singles look unobtrusive on the page, although, yeah, sometimes they can make your text confusing if you have a character with a slight accent:

'My cousin liked 'em.' <<---- This can look very weird if you don't use the curly quotes to get this: ‘My cousin liked ’em.’ And I'd have to set the apostrophe before the "em" as a closing quote mark or else I get this, which looks weirder: ‘My cousin liked ‘em.’ <<--- To me, this looks like you're saying his cousin likes a woman called Em! (I know the full stop is in the wrong place and there's no capital letter on "em", but still...)

My partner, Seph, is a firm believer in being opposite to me, so he prefers double quotes in his stories. That was the way I was taught at school, too. But it doesn't really matter one way or the other since it's down to preference and/or the house style of your publisher.

[AnyaKimlin]

I tend towards singles for speech and double for anything quoted. My understanding is we can use either in the UK and I prefer the position of the single on the keyboard.

When handwriting on the other hand for some reason I use double.

[Metryq]

The single versus double is typically a US/UK thing. Many writers defer to references such as the Chicago Manual of Style.

Straight versus curly (or "smart quotes") is a typographical consideration. As a graphic artist (I wouldn't call myself a full typographer) I've had it drilled into my head that quotes and apostrophes are not minutes/seconds or inches/feet marks. But again, the "typesetters" will worry about that (along with hyphens, en-dashes, em-dashes, non-breaking ellipses, etc.), even if you are not releasing a print copy. My personal bias is for smart quotes because they look more refined and finished. Most word processors have a preference setting, although I do know the keyboard shortcuts for my operating system. Despite my preference for smart quotes, I don't use the keyboard shortcuts on this forum because it's idle chatter and too much of a hassle. (Examples of “manual, keyboard shortcut” smart quotes and ‘ ’ apostrophes.) The garbage coming out of Word is due to the invisible codes used by RTF or other "rich text" systems, which are not accepted on the Web.

Some word processors feature intelligent find/replace functions like grep, but they take some training to use. For the technophobes, there are tools like TextSoap (a Mac app, but there are probably Windows and Linux variants).

[Mouse]

Personally, I think single quotation marks are ugly so I use double for speech.

[Boneman]

I'm for a double! I use singles for thoughts, if I have to..

Leisha! Good to see you back - we've missed you.(Sorry, back on thread...)

"Leisha!" Boneman said. "Good to see you back - we've missed you."

[Leisha]

To everyone in the USA:
"It's nice to be back. But it's not as if I would ever leave this place for good - it's my home!"

To everyone in the UK:
'It's nice to be back. But it's not as if I would ever leave this place for good - it's my home!'

To everyone who rightly doesn't care either way because it's not as if an editor/agent would reject your manuscript on the basis of which mark you use:
"It's nice to be back. But it's not as if I would ever leave this place for good - it's my home!"

[Gary Compton]

Originally Posted by I, Brian

Would be a lot of work to replace the neutral with single.

Question is, do I really need to be concerned about this?

It wouldn't be difficult. If your using Word go to editing, top rhs of toolbar.

Select replace option and enter ' to be replaced by"

You'll then have to repeat process for "s "ve etc etc

Simples