Because most of the computer keyboards lack keys to directly enter typographic quotation marks, much typed writing has vertical quotation marks.The "smart quotes" feature in some computer software can convert vertical quotation marks to curly ones, although sometimes imperfectly.British English tends to reverse the usage—single quotation marks ( In American English, double quotes are used normally (the "primary" style).If quote marks are used inside another pair of quote marks, then single quotes are used as the "secondary" style.For example: "Didn't she say 'I like red best' when I asked her wine preferences? If another set of quotes is nested, double quotes are used again, and they continue to alternate as necessary (though this is rarely done).British English tends to have the opposite convention – single quotes are primary, and double quotes are secondary; however, this distinction dates back only to around the 1960s.“To legalize marriage between two people of the same sex would enshrine in the law the principle that mothers and fathers are interchangeable or irrelevant, and that marriage is essentially an institution about adults, not children; marriage would mean nothing more than giving adults recognition and benefits in their most significant relationship.” Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone “Our bodies have meaning.
claim that the reason for this was an aesthetical one.During the seventeenth century this treatment became specific to quoted material, and it grew common, especially in Britain, to print quotation marks (now in the modern opening and closing forms) at beginning and end of the quotation as well as in the margin; the French usage (see under Specific language features below) In most other languages, including English, the marginal marks dropped out of use in the last years of the eighteenth century.The usage of a pair of marks, closing and opening, at the level of lower case letters was generalized.The elevated quotation marks created an extra white space before and after the word that was considered unaesthetical, while the in-line quotation marks helped to maintain the typographical color, since the quotation marks had the same height and were aligned with the lower case letters.) are also a development of the in-line angular quotation marks.In Central Europe, however, the practice was to use the quotation marks in pairs but "pointing" inside.