Using Quotation Marks

1. Use quotation marks to indicates words directly quoted from another

source, whether that source be a person or another work.
Ex. A: The old man said before he turned away, "I'm a human being and deserving of
some respect, just for that fact."
Note 1: Commas and periods always go inside quotation marks.
Note 2: A comma usually precedes a direct quotation used within a sentence.
Ex. B: Eppie Girl said, "Meow," and jumped to the floor.
Ex. C: In 1869, John Stuart Mill said, "Laws and systems of polity always begin by
recognizing the relations they find already existing between individuals" (432).
Note: A parenthetical citation of a work goes after the quotation marks and before
the period.
Mill, John Stuart. The Subjection of Women. 1869. London: Oxford UP, 1966.
Ex. D: Did Hermione say, "I don't know"?
Note: Put the question mark outside the quotation marks if the quotation itself is not
a question, but the sentence in which the quotation is used is a question.
2. Use quotation marks to indicate titles of shorter works, such as poems,
songs, short stories, magazine and newspaper articles, essays, and episodes of
television shows.
Ex. A: Theron read Robert Frost's poem "Stopping By a Woods."
Ex. B: The title of the essay is "Freedom and My Life," by Davey Ehrengard.
Ex. C: One of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons is "Bart Gets an F."
Note: The titles of television shows are italicized.

Rules for the correct use of the apostrophe.

In US English, the apostrophe is used:
1. To indicate the possessive.
2. To indicate missing letters.
3. Sometimes to indicate the structure of unusual words.
1. To indicate the possessive.
This is Peter's book.
This book is Peter's.
The dog's dinner looks disgusting.
Diana was the people's princess.
I tore up the men's shirts.
One should choose one's words carefully.
It is everyone's duty to protest.

 It is no-one's responsibility.
Personal pronouns (words like I, you, he, she, it, we, they) indicate the possessive by
becoming a whole new word. These new words are already possessive, so they don't
need an apostrophe: my, mine, your, yours, his, her, hers, its, our, ours, their, theirs.
Note that none of them has an apostrophe.
The house is yours.
The dog broke its leg.
She said the book was hers.
They claimed it was theirs.
But really it was ours.
It's means it is or it has. There's no such word as its'.
2. To indicate missing letters in the middle of words or phrases.
You can't have it.
Don't do that!
I'd like an ice-cream, please.
We'd better hurry.
But we don't always use apostrophes:
15, Elm Rd.
St Matthew Passion
Photo is short for photograph.
It is easier to say CD than Compact Disc.
In the cases where you wouldn't use an apostrophe in the singular, don't use it for
the plural:
I had one photo.
They had two photos.
We sell CDs and DVDs.
I was born in the 1960s.
But we say this CD's broken because it's a short form of this CD is broken.
3. Sometimes to indicate the structure of unusual words.
A few words are sufficiently confusing that we want to indicate to the reader how
the word is constructed. The apostrophe can be used for this if it is really necessary,
but mostly it isn't.
He bcc'd a copy to all the managers.
Mind your p's and q's.
Dot your i's and cross your t's.
A list of do's and don'ts.
But you might consider:
He sent a blind copy to all the managers
Mind your ps and qs
Dot your is and cross your ts
A list of DOs and DON'Ts.
There's no need for it in:
She got three As in her exams.
All our CDs are perfect.

We sell videos.
I'd like two cappuccinos, please.

Childrens' shoes or children's shoes?

The apostrophe goes directly after the thing doing the possessing:
The sun's rays = the rays of the sun.
The table's leg = the leg of the table.
The archbishop's palace = the palace of the archbishop.
The archbishops' palace = the palace of the archbishops.
The men's shirts = the shirts of the men.
Children's T-shirts = T-shirts of children.
The people's princess = the princess of the people.
The American peoples' inheritance = the inheritance of the American
peoples.
My mother's photo = photo of my mother.
One week's notice = notice of one week.
Two weeks' notice = notice of two weeks.
Three years' experience = experience of three years.
Everyone's help = help of everyone.
Note that we can often use for instead of of shirts for the men. The possessive is
much a looser concept than ownership: the girls may not own the school, but it's still
a girls' school.

The apostrophe is used to show a connection between two things: if a dog has a
bone, it's the dog's bone. But sometimes there is no possessive connection.
Sometimes the relationship is adjectival, not possessive:
Accounts department
Sports car
The accounts don't have the department, and the sports don't have a car it's a
department of type "accounts", and a car of type "sports". We could just as well have
written:
Marketing department
Two-door car
A department of type "marketing" and a car of type "two-door". Clearly not
possessive.

Sometimes there's no thing to possess or be possessed:

Twelve weeks pregnant
There's no such thing as a "pregnant", and the twelve weeks can't have one, so
the phrase is not possessive. We could say twelve weeks' notice and two years'
experience, because there are such things as notice and experience, and in some
sense they are linked to ("given by" if you like) the twelve weeks and the two years.
(Technically, pregnant is an adjective, notice and experience are nouns. Possessive
phrases need two nouns one to possess and one to be possessed.)
A forty-week pregnancy
The pregnancy is not linked to a "forty-week". In forty weeks' pregnancy, the
pregnancy is linked to forty weeks.
She walks the dog
You sometimes see She walk's the dog, but this is wrong. The walks here is not the
possessive of a walk, but the present tense of the verb to walk. Verbs never take
possessive apostrophes. It should be she walks the dog.
CD's and video's for sale.
This is also wrong there's nothing in the sentence to be possessed by the CD or the
video. It should be plural, not possessive: CDs and videos for sale. It would be OK to
say the CD's label was coming off, and the video's price was wrong, because the CD
does have a label, and the video does have a price