Capital letters → Bold text → Comma → Semi-colon → Section headings → Use sentence case → Italics → Apostrophe → Vertical spacing → Sentence spacing → Period → Tables → Quotation marks |
- You may be looking for our guidelines about when and how to quote people.
The use of quotation marks shall favour the American usage, as it's less ambiguous for the MediaWiki software underpinning the wiki. Use double quotation marks (") surrounding single ones ('), even though most Doctor Who fiction uses the precise opposite format.
Correct | Incorrect |
---|---|
The Doctor said, "Oh, I know he said he was 'important', but, trust me, that's just the Dalek id talking." | The Doctor said, 'Oh, I know he said he was "important", but, trust me, that's just the Dalek id talking.' |
The reason for this ruling is simple. Since the single inverted comma has an actual meaning in everyday wiki markup, it's all too easy for it to throw off the formatting of a sentence. Indeed, we even have to have a special template, {{'}}, to counteract the problem. Thus, even though it goes against years of schooling for some of us, it's best to use double-quotations on the outside, then follow with single-quotations only as needed.