5.Quotation marks (“...” or ‘...’) Quotation marks in English are ‘…’ or “…”. In direct speech, we enclose what is said within a pair of single or double quotation marks, although single quotation marks are becoming more common. Direct speech begins with a capital letter and can be preceded by a comma or a colon: She said, “Where can we find a nice Indian restaurant?” (or She said: ‘Where can we find a nice Indian restaurant?’) 6.Dashes (-) Dashes are more common in informal writing. They can be used in similar ways to commas or semi-colons. Both single and multiple dashes may be used: Our teacher – who often gets cross when we’re late – wasn’t cross at all. No one could believe it! Just wanted to thank you for a lovely evening – we really enjoyed it. 7. Brackets () Brackets have a similar function to dashes. They often add extra, non-essential information: Thriplow (pronounced ‘Triplow’) is a small village in the eastern part of England. We use brackets around dates and page numbers in academic writing: Heaton (1978) gives a convincing explanation of how hurricanes are formed (pages 27–32).
