Single Quotation Mark



 Yigal Ben Efraim
Single Quotation Mark

The single quotation marks emerged around 1800 as a means of indicating a secondary level of quotation.

One could expect that the logic of using the corresponding single mark would be applied everywhere, but it was not. In some languages using the angular quotation marks, the usage of single ones (‹…›) became obsolete, being replaced by double curved ones (“…”); the single ones still survive, for instance, in Switzerland. In Eastern Europe, the curved quotation marks („…“) are used as a secondary level when the angular marks («…») are used as a primary level.

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