To Quotation Mark or Not to Quotation Mark? That Is the Punctuation…
To quotation mark or not to quotation mark? That, increasingly, has become the punctuation question in the literary world. Once a given, inverted commas have been framing dialogue and kept readers oriented for centuries. Now, writers are dropping them, challenging conventions and reshaping how we engage with text.
Also known as inverted commas, speech marks, or simply quotes, quotation marks have been traced back to the Greeks by Ruth Finnegan, in Why Do We Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation Marks. They used the diple, or double arrow-shaped mark, like a modern proofreader's notation, flagging significant passages in manuscripts. It signaled a pause, a breath, a moment to slow down.
Over centuries, these marks migrated from the margins of the page into the text itself. Their primary function evolved from highlighting noteworthy sections to explicitly indicating quoted speech, particularly in religious texts. By the 16th century, printed books routinely included quotation marks, transitioning from comma-like symbols to the familiar curved marks we in the US are familiar with today.
Caveat: different languages and regions developed their own conventions: the French adopted «...», the Germans use „...“, while British and Irish English favor single ‘...’, and American English standardizes double “...”.
Beyond speech, quotation marks serve to denote short works, nicknames, and irony. In journalism and academia, they play a critical role in distinguishing direct quotations from paraphrased ideas, safeguarding against plagiarism.
Fiction writers are questioning their necessity.
Novelists as diverse as James Joyce and Grace Paley discarded quotation marks long ago, and now the trend has gained momentum. Contemporary novelists such as Sally Rooney, Paul Lynch, Emma Copley Eisenberg, Cormac McCarthy, Celeste Ng, Miranda July, and Ling Ma have all abandoned them for different reasons.
Some authors feel that omitting quotation marks creates a sense of fluidity, blurring the boundaries between narration and dialogue. Others see it as a means of dismantling hierarchy on the page. Dorothy Richardson, wrote her 13-volume series Pilgrimage in the beginning of the 20th century, without quotation marks as a political statement.
Women, she believed, should have the freedom to write “without formal obstructions.”
Copley Eisenberg, in conversation with Michelle Hoover on The 7AM Novelist podcast, puts it bluntly: “We don’t think in quotation marks. Why write them?”
Yet she acknowledges that the choice places greater pressure on the writer to ensure dialogue reads naturally.
Because, of course, there’s the reader to consider. Not using inverted commas can be seen as a "high literary and annoying move," Copley Eisenberg says, but readers eventually learn to read it that way.
Sally Rooney's reviews in Goodreads illustrate acceptance to experimentation. Some gave her book Conversations with Friends one star because they didn't like the lack of punctuation; others meted out top honors because they loved the innovation.
Without quotation marks, dialogue must be structured carefully so that it remains clear who is speaking, and it's hard to make it work. Copley Eisenberg relies on paragraph spacing to visually cue shifts in conversation, but not all authors take this approach. Some, like Miriam Toews in A Complicated Kindness, embrace the ambiguity, forcing the reader to engage more actively with the text
Yes, yeah, that’s me, I said. Gloria scanned my face. No scars though, she said. I wanted to scream: THAT’S WHERE YOU ARE SO UNBELIEVABLY WRONG!
Like Toews, Copley Eisenberg frequently uses "said," believing it to be an invisible word that doesn’t clutter the prose. Personally, I avoid "said" altogether, experimenting instead with pairing dialogue with movement or interiority. We’ll see how that plays out.
Laura gripped her laptop tighter. “Well, I could also work from home.”
“Yeah, I can totally see Maddie playing quietly by herself. That worked so well during Covid.” Sam rolled his eyes.
Copley Eisenberg quotes Elizabeth McCracken as advising to trust dialogue to stand on its own without excessive scaffolding: Learn to signal without signaling.
Cormac McCarthy, in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, echoed this sentiment, citing James Joyce: “There’s no reason to block the page up with weird little marks. If you write properly, you shouldn’t have to punctuate.”
Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of A Minor Chorus, and Sally Rooney both argue that, particularly in first-person narratives, the entire novel functions as a quotation of the protagonist's experience.
“I don’t see any need for them, and I don’t understand the function they perform in a novel, marking off some particular pieces of the text as quotations,” Rooney told Stet. “I mean, it’s a novel written in the first person, isn’t it all a quotation?”
If everything is filtered through one consciousness, there is no need to delineate spoken words, the reasoning goes.
For some, this stylistic choice serves a broader artistic aim. Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song is written without quotation marks or paragraph breaks to create a relentless, claustrophobic atmosphere, mirroring the oppressive nature of the novel’s world, and he won a Booker Prize for the effort.
Ultimately, as Belcourt told The Walrus, the move away from quotation marks represents a small but meaningful rebellion against rigid literary conventions. He welcomes “a lot of different kinds of small subversions by writers.”
As readers, we adapt, whether with enthusiasm or begrudging patience, to the ever-evolving shape of storytelling. As writers and artists, we experiment and play because otherwise we'd just be repeating ourselves over the centuries.