Quotation marks

Quotation marks also called, less formally, quotes or speech marks (“...” or ‘...’ or «...», etc.) are punctuation marks organized in pairs, set at the beginning and the end of a quotation and, likewise, at the beginning and the end of any passage with a special sense, a special use or a special form.

The passage between quotation marks may vary considerably in size, ranging form a single word to several paragraphs.

Quotation marks may have differing shapes and layouts depending on the language:
 * «...» (guillemets)
 * etc.
 * «...» (guillemets)
 * etc.
 * etc.
 * etc.
 * etc.
 * etc.
 * etc.
 * etc.

The following table summerizes various uses in various languages.

The shapes of quotation marks differ generally at the beginning (“..., ‘..., «...) and the end (...”, ...’, ...»). However, in a neglected typography, in typewriters and in many publishing softwares, some differentiated shapes such as “...” and ‘...’ (called “smart quotes”) are replaced by uniform, straight shapes such as "..." and '...' (called “dumb quotes”).

Sometimes, inner quotation marks may be inserted within outer quotation marks. In this case, the outer pair has the same form as other quotation marks of the text, whereas the inner pair has in general a different form. For instance:
 * “Mark said ‘hello’ this morning.”
 * ‘Mark said “hello” this morning.’