quotation marks

Quotation marks enclose a direct quotation, the exact words someone said or wrote: She said, “The flight is delayed.” They also enclose the titles of short works, such as articles, songs, poems, and episodes: the song “Hurt.” Single quotation marks enclose a quotation within a quotation: He told us, “Mom said ‘no dessert,’ so don’t ask.” A period or a comma goes inside the closing quotation mark: “Hurry,” she said. A colon or a semicolon goes outside: He called it “a draft”; it was the final version. A question mark, an exclamation point, or an em dash goes inside when it belongs to the quoted words and outside when it belongs to the whole sentence: She asked, “Are we late?” Did he really say “no comment”? Each use of quotation marks has its own entry, listed under Quotation Marks.