The history of quotation marks runs from an arrowhead in the margin of a Greek book to the curly pair a word processor types for you. The arrowhead was the diple (>). Christian scribes used it, and a cursive descendant shaped like an S, to flag Bible quotations; printers cut comma-shaped successors in metal type; and by the nineteenth century the marks sat in the line, opening and closing the quoted words.
EdCitation publishes this guide. Every date and quotation in it was read at its source on 2 October 2026, from scholars' histories and printers' manuals to Unicode's charts, and what could not be confirmed is marked.
EdCitation's free Cite a source builds every reference with its style's own marks, and Mechanics QA checks a finished paper's formatting and the slips a spell-checker lets through. Where the full stop goes is covered in full stops inside or outside quotation marks.
What is the history of quotation marks?
Quotation marks descend from the diple, a wedge-shaped mark (>) named from the Greek for "double" after its two strokes. Finnegan (2011, pp. 86–87) describes it as an all-purpose marginal sign in early Greek manuscripts, pointing to a doubtful reading, a new section or a passage for comment, with no meaning of its own beyond drawing the eye.
From Greek margins to Christian books
Steinová (2018) finds the diple in papyri from the second century BCE as a general annotation sign, and as a sign for quotations from the second century CE. Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae lists it among twenty-six annotation symbols, as the mark scribes placed in churchmen's books "to distinguish or mark the testimonies of Holy Scriptures" (Steinová's translation, p. 124).
The Latin West marked Bible quotations from the fifth century, at first by indenting them; in the sixth century a sign in the margin gained ground. In the Codices Latini Antiquiores, the twelve-volume record of early Latin manuscripts, Steinová (2018, p. 127) counted 283 manuscripts, roughly 14%, that mark citations with such a sign. The classic diple appears in only 19. An S-shaped flourish, the diple drawn in one stroke, appears in 159, and Carolingian scribes made it the standard by the end of the eighth century: Steinová estimates that more than half of the manuscripts from Carolingian scriptoria carry it.
Signs in the margin, not yet punctuation
An eighth-century copy of Bede's commentary on Proverbs, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 819, reproduced by Finnegan (2011, p. 87), shows marks more like long commas than arrowheads down the left margin. Steinová calls these quotation signs, readers' marks, and keeps quotation mark for the punctuation that came with printing.
How did the diple become inverted commas?
Printers turned it into a piece of type. Finnegan (2011, p. 90) finds comma-shaped successors of the diple being cut in metal by the early sixteenth century, mostly doubled, and known by the seventeenth century as "inverted" or "turned" commas.
Quotation or commonplace?
The same marks did two jobs. Estill (2019) dates the earliest known printed commonplace markers, flagging lines worth copying into a notebook, to Filippo Giunta's 1506 Seneca, and quotation marks to the same early sixteenth century. Estill quotes Margreta de Grazia's distinction: commonplace markers "signalled communal ground", while quotation marks "fence in a passage as property of another".
There is an earlier claim. Steinová (2018, p. 123) reports that Giordano Castellani credits Francesco Filelfo's Orationes et opuscula of 1483/84 as perhaps the first printed book to mark quotations consistently; Castellani's own title ends in a question mark, so treat "first" as unsettled. Marking speech came later, with the 1574 Mirror for Magistrates one early example.
Into the line
The marks began in the margin, beside every line of a quotation. Estill (2019) finds opening marks inside the line before closing ones, and the habit of marking each line fading early in the nineteenth century. The earliest English grammar to define the mark, A Treatise of Stops, Points, or Pauses (1680), called it "A note of Citation", and around 1700 it was normally cast as one piece of type.
By 1855 a Boston printer could describe the result in a sentence: two inverted commas at the beginning and two apostrophes at the end (Wilson, 1855, p. 228). That is why they look like a 66 and a 99, and why Unicode still gives the left double mark the alias "double turned comma quotation mark" (Unicode Consortium, 2026c).
Single or double quotation marks: who decided?
Printers' house rules decided, and the British and American rule books chose opposite ways within half a century. Wilson (1855, pp. 228–230) told printers to open with double marks and to set a quotation inside a quotation in single ones. Horace Hart's rules for the compositors at the University Press, Oxford, reversed that: single marks first, double inside (Hart, 1905, p. 43). Chicago's first Manual of Style sided with Wilson: double for the main quotation, single within, then double again (University of Chicago Press, 1906, rule 81).
The split holds. Chicago's editors say the British tend to keep double marks for quotations within quotations (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-a), and the University of Oxford's style guide asks for single marks around a quote, double inside it, and none around a displayed quotation (University of Oxford, 2026). Which pair you use depends on the style your course names, not on where you live; spelling and the rest are in British or American English in academic writing.
What are guillemets, and how do other languages mark quotations?
Guillemets are the angle marks « », used for quotations in French, Greek, Russian and other languages. Unicode's chart gives them the aliases "left guillemet" and "right guillemet", with "chevrons" as the typographers' word (Unicode Consortium, 2026b).
Who was Guillaume?
The word is a diminutive of the name Guillaume. The Office québécois de la langue française (n.d.) says guillemets were invented in the sixteenth century and "probably" take their name from a printer called Guillaume, and Usito (n.d.), the Université de Sherbrooke's dictionary, dates the word to 1677. Finnegan (2011, p. 94) names the typecutter Guillaume Le Bé. We found no document from Le Bé's own time showing that the marks were his, so the inventor stays unconfirmed.
The marks, language by language
Unicode encodes quotation marks by shape, not by use, so one character can open a quotation in one language and close it in another (Unicode Consortium, 2026d). Its survey and the national guides give this picture:
| Mark | Where used | Example | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| “ ” curly double | Outer pair in American English, APA, MLA and Chicago | “quoted” | Modern Language Association (2018); University of Chicago Press (n.d.-b) |
| ‘ ’ curly single | Outer pair in Oxford and many British house styles; inner pair in American style | ‘quoted’ | University of Oxford (2026); Hart (1905) |
| " ' straight | Typewriters, keyboards, code, database searches | "quoted" | Unicode Consortium (2026a) |
| « » guillemets | French, with a non-breaking space inside; also Greek and Russian | « cité » | Office québécois de la langue française (n.d.); Unicode Consortium (2026d) |
| „ “ low, then high | German, Czech, Slovak | „zitiert“ | Duden (n.d.); Unicode Consortium (2026d) |
| » « pointing inwards | German books; Slovenian | »zitiert« | Unicode Consortium (2026d) |
| ” ” one mark at both ends | Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish | ”citerad” | Unicode Consortium (2026d) |
| „ ” low, then closing high | Hungarian, Polish | „cytat” | Unicode Consortium (2026d) |
| 「 」 corner brackets | Japanese, above all in vertical text | 「引用」 | W3C (2020) |
Inside a guillemet quotation, French switches to English double, then single, marks (Office québécois de la langue française, n.d.). Hart (1905, p. 70) was already telling Oxford's compositors that German quotations open with commas and close with turned ones. To quote such a source in an English paper, see quoting a source in another language.
Curly quotes vs straight quotes: which should you use?
Use curly quotes in finished prose and straight ones in code and database searches. Chicago's editors call typographer's marks "superior" and the straight ones a compromise (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-c).
The typewriter's single key
Most typewriter makers gave quotation marks and apostrophes one key, Chicago's Q&A explains, and keyboard makers followed (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-c). Unicode keeps that character as U+0022, "neutral (vertical)" in its chart, and names U+201C and U+201D as the preferred pair for English (Unicode Consortium, 2026a). The Standard's own text finds the straight mark mainly suited to typewritten manuscripts and programming (Unicode Consortium, 2026d).
Smart quotes, and where they go wrong
Word processors put the curly marks back as you type; in Word the setting is "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes", under AutoFormat As You Type (Microsoft, n.d.). The software guesses from position, so an apostrophe starting a word can come out as an opening mark: ‘90s where ’90s was meant. Unicode prefers U+2019, the right single quotation mark, for the apostrophe (Unicode Consortium, 2026c); the mark's own story is in the apostrophe and its defenders. Straight marks keep one job in research: our guide to exact phrase searching shows Scopus warning that curly quotes can break a query.
What do APA, MLA, Chicago and Oxford ask today?
APA, MLA and Chicago open with double marks and Oxford with single ones; they also differ in the reference list.
- APA 7. Double marks around a short quotation, as in APA's own examples, and none around a block quotation of 40 words or more (American Psychological Association, 2022b). A source's single marks may become double, or double single, without telling the reader (American Psychological Association, 2022a).
- MLA 9. Double, then single inside, then double again (Modern Language Association, 2018). Kandel (2017), long an MLA editor, advises using scare quotes, marks around words nobody is quoted as saying, sparingly or not at all.
- Chicago 18. Double, then single inside, as in its editors' own answers (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-b), the order its 1906 manual set, and typographer's marks rather than straight ones (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-c).
- Oxford. Single, then double, and single marks for article and chapter titles in the text (University of Oxford, 2026).
Full stops and commas divide them too: APA puts them inside the closing mark (American Psychological Association, 2022b), Oxford only when the quoted words had them (University of Oxford, 2026). The full stops guide has every case, and too many quotations covers when to quote at all.
Quotation marks in the reference list
On 2 October 2026 we gave EdCitation's free Cite a source the DOI of Steinová's article. The record came from Crossref and was not flagged as retracted. The APA 7 entry:
Steinová, E. (2018). The rise of the quotation sign in the Latin West and the changing modes of reading between the sixth and the ninth centuries. Scriptorium, 72(2), 123–166. https://doi.org/10.3406/scrip.2018.4495
And the Harvard entry:
Steinová, E. (2018) ‘The rise of the quotation sign in the Latin West and the changing modes of reading between the sixth and the ninth centuries’, Scriptorium, 72(2), pp. 123–166. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3406/scrip.2018.4495.
APA puts no marks around an article title. Harvard puts it in single curly marks with the comma outside, and the MLA entry from the same run used double marks with the full stop inside.
How do I check the quotation marks in my paper?
Settle the style first, then check each kind of mark.
- Find the style. Paste the brief into Check your paper, free; it names the citation style with the sentence it came from.
- Set the outer pair. Double for APA, MLA and Chicago; single where a British house style asks for it.
- Alternate when nesting. Double, single, double, or the reverse in British style.
- Turn smart quotes on, then search the file for straight marks left by pasting.
- Check every apostrophe that starts a word, such as ’90s.
- Build the references in Cite a source and paste the list into Verify references, both free.
- Run Mechanics QA on the finished file. Quotation-mark style is not among its listed checks, so steps 2 to 5 stay yours.
How does EdCitation help with quotations and their marks?
EdCitation is the strongest tool for the part of a quotation that must be exact: the source behind it. It looks every source up in the publisher's record and never writes a reference, which is why the run above came back from Crossref, screened for retraction, in each style's own marks.
Mechanics QA, for the finished file
Mechanics QA gives a whole paper a rule-by-rule check: font, spacing, margins, title page, headings and the reference list against the APA 7 student paper; comments, tracked changes and placeholders left in the file; each citation matched to the list and each reference looked up; figures that disagree between sections; and the slips a spell-checker lets through. No model reads the paper, and each finding names the rule it broke and the fix. It is part of Pro at $8 a month, and a free account can run three checks a month (pricing).
Find sources and Verify references, free
Find sources searches about 300 million published works; our search for "history of quotation marks" returned 177,264 results, Finnegan's book first. Verify references marks each entry verified, "check this" or not found, and never shows one it could not check as not found.
The words inside your quotation marks belong to your sources, and every word around them is yours: EdCitation finds, cites and checks, and never writes any part of your work.
Quick questions
Why are quotation marks called inverted commas?
Because printers made them from commas: Wilson's 1855 treatise opens a quotation with two inverted commas and closes it with two apostrophes.
Should I use single or double quotation marks?
Follow your style. APA, MLA and Chicago use double marks with single inside; Oxford and many British house styles reverse that.
What are guillemets?
The angle marks « », used for quotations in French, Greek, Russian and other languages. French sets a non-breaking space inside them.
Are curly or straight quotes correct in an essay?
Curly. Chicago calls typographer's marks superior; straight marks belong in code and database searches.
Can EdCitation check my quotation marks?
Not as a listed check. Mechanics QA checks formatting, citations, numbers and language, and Cite a source sets each style's own marks in your references.
References
- American Psychological Association. (2022a). Changes to quotations. APA Style. https://web.archive.org/web/20260929082522/https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/quotations/changes
- American Psychological Association. (2022b). Quotations. APA Style. https://web.archive.org/web/20260929082511/https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/quotations
- Duden. (n.d.). Anführungszeichen. Duden Sprachwissen. https://www.duden.de/sprachwissen/rechtschreibregeln/anfuehrungszeichen
- Estill, L. (2019). Commonplace markers and quotation marks. ArchBook: Architectures of the Book, University of Saskatchewan. https://drc.usask.ca/projects/archbook/commonplace.php
- Finnegan, R. (2011). Why do we quote? The culture and history of quotation. Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0012
- Hart, H. (1905). Rules for compositors and readers at the University Press, Oxford (19th ed.). Henry Frowde. https://archive.org/details/rulesforcomposi00bradgoog
- Kandel, M. (2017, May 22). Quotes when nothing is being quoted. MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/quotes-when-nothing-is-being-quoted/
- Microsoft. (n.d.). Smart quotes in Word and PowerPoint. Microsoft Support. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/word/smart-quotes-in-word-and-powerpoint
- Modern Language Association. (2018, March 9). How do I punctuate a quotation within a quotation within a quotation? MLA Style Center. https://style.mla.org/quoted-material-in-quoted-material/
- Office québécois de la langue française. (n.d.). Généralités sur les guillemets. Banque de dépannage linguistique. https://vitrinelinguistique.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/23363/la-ponctuation/guillemets/generalites-sur-les-guillemets
- Steinová, E. (2018). The rise of the quotation sign in the Latin West and the changing modes of reading between the sixth and the ninth centuries. Scriptorium, 72(2), 123–166. https://doi.org/10.3406/scrip.2018.4495
- Unicode Consortium. (2026a). C0 controls and Basic Latin: Range 0000–007F [Code chart]. The Unicode Standard, Version 18.0. https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0000.pdf
- Unicode Consortium. (2026b). C1 controls and Latin-1 supplement: Range 0080–00FF [Code chart]. The Unicode Standard, Version 18.0. https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf
- Unicode Consortium. (2026c). General punctuation: Range 2000–206F [Code chart]. The Unicode Standard, Version 18.0. https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2000.pdf
- Unicode Consortium. (2026d). Writing systems and punctuation. In The Unicode standard, version 18.0.0 (chap. 6). https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode18.0.0/core-spec/chapter-6/
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.-a). Quotations and dialogue (Q&A No. 5). The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Quotations/faq0005.html
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.-b). Quotations and dialogue (Q&A No. 95). The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Quotations/faq0095.html
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.-c). Special characters (Q&A No. 2). The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/SpecialCharacters/faq0002.html
- University of Chicago Press. (1906). Manual of style [Facsimile]. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/dam/jcr:bba47b07-61ba-41c3-8c79-33c005c1f56d/CMSfacsimile_all.pdf
- University of Oxford. (2026). Punctuation. University of Oxford style guide. https://web.archive.org/web/20260819025254/https://www.ox.ac.uk/about/the-university/brand/style-guide/punctuation
- Usito. (n.d.). Guillemet. Université de Sherbrooke. https://usito.usherbrooke.ca/d%C3%A9finitions/guillemet
- W3C. (2020). Requirements for Japanese text layout (W3C Working Group Note). https://www.w3.org/TR/2020/NOTE-jlreq-20200811/
- Wilson, J. (1855). A treatise on English punctuation (3rd ed.). John Wilson & Son. https://archive.org/details/treatiseonengli00wils