1

Quotation through History: A Historical Case for the Proper Treatment of Quotation

Michael Johnson

Department of Philosophy, Hong Kong University

Tel: 852 9706 5215

micjohns@hku.hk

Abstract I present a theory of quotation in speech reports and the resolution of indexicals in

those reports based partially on the historical development of the practice of punctuating with

quotation marks. For the first thousand or so years of English writing, quotation marks weren’t

used. Their use in direct quotation developed in the 18th century through a need created by the

rise of the novel, a need to clearly and frequently mark out when direct speech begins and ends.

The 18th Century practice differs noticeably from current practice. While 18 th century novels

always place direct speech forms within quotes, they sometimes also place indirect forms there

as well. I present a diachronically consistent theory of quotation in speech reports. For a variety

of reasons, contemporary direct speech reports may diverge from a verbatim reproduction of the

reported speakers’ words: translation, removal of taboos, and clean-up of infelicities and non-

standard dialect features. Speech that has been minimally altered in these respects is still

appropriately placed within quotation marks. The same was true in the 18 th Century novel: but

those authors allowed that context-sensitive direct forms could be altered within a quotation to

indirect forms, in certain circumstances. The historical data also supports the claim that quotation

marks are punctuation marks with no semantic effects. Monstrous accounts cannot handle cases

where some but not all context sensitive expressions are “shifted” within quotes. I present a non-

monstrous account of indexicals in reported speech.

1 Introduction

In common parlance, quotation is repeating the words of someone. That someone need not be

distinct from the person quoting: you can quote yourself. That someone need not exist, and need

not be in the past: you can quote Gandalf, quote what someone should have said, or quote what

they will say. Indeed, you can even quote a source when you aren’t aware that that person was

the source of the quote:

2

Even if you’ve never read a play by Shakespeare, you’ve probably quoted him

countless times without even knowing it…Bet the last time you said that you

hadn't “slept one wink,” you didn't realize you were quoting Cymbeline.1

There are myriad reasons to quote. Quoting others reveals our social alignments, our

knowledge, preferences, and interests. Quoting is a powerful social signifier:

I get a lot of e-mails from foreigners hoping to secure a visa to work in the United

States… a few weeks ago, one of the guys who e-mailed me had a signature that,

at the very bottom, said, “Everything dies, baby that’s a fact, but maybe

everything that dies someday comes back.”

I wished so bad that I could get that guy into the United States at that moment.

Because anyone going around quoting Bruce Springsteen deserves to be allowed

into the United States.2

Quoting song lyrics, religious texts, and literary figures not only reveals our knowledge of social

norms and mores, but also appeals to and at the same time enforces those norms. Quoting can be

a powerful form of adding gravitas, credibility, and authority to our speech, and it can also be a

potent means of undermining authority. For example, when Job appears to be questioning his

ability to prove his innocence to God in 9:2-24, “Job is really exposing his friends, by ironically

quoting some of their absurd maxims” (Clarke 1837: 197). Quotation can even be a means of

creating authority, as when we quote past predictions that came out correct.

In our contemporary, formal, written practice, quotation marks are used to attribute

spoken or written words to others. But it was not always so. The diple, the forerunner of the

quotation mark, began simply as a means for ancient Greek editors to highlight important or

1 Joelle Herr, William Shakespeare: The Complete Plays in One Sitting, Introduction. This is

somewhat of a borderline case because I’m assuming that Herr is assuming that those who are

unknowingly quoting Shakespeare see themselves as quoting someone, they are just unaware of

who they are quoting.2 Catching Wise (blog), http://www.catchingwise.com/tag/bruce-springsteen-is-america/ .

3

interesting aspects of the text (Finnegan 201: 86). In the Christian era, the marks were adopted to

signal Old Testament passages that are quoted or paraphrased in the New Testament, and to

signal the words of Jesus (but not others). Quotation marks weren’t used for ordinary dialog:

“quotation quintessentially pertained to the scriptures… it was not for the speech of ordinary

mortals” (Finnegan: 97-98). It wasn’t until the 18th century and the rise of the novel that

quotation marks began to take on a role closer to their present one (Finnegan: 98). In novels,

multiple speakers exchange remarks, and it is necessary to indicate when one person’s speech

ends and another’s begins. Quote marks soon became standard in this role.

However, the 18th century practice of using quote marks does differ in a number of

significant ways from our current practice, though I will argue that the differences aren’t very

deep. I’ll further argue that there’s no particular reason to think our current practice is either

more or less worthy of a theoretical understanding than its historical forerunners are. Insofar as

we have reasons to have a semantic or pragmatic (or whatever) theory of quotation as it works

now, we have reasons to have a semantic or pragmatic (or whatever) theory of quotation in the

18th century. In this essay I’ll first introduce and analyze 18th century practice; then I’ll attempt to

provide a theory that covers both it and contemporary practice.

2 Q-marks and the 18th Century Novel

For the majority of time that English has been written, direct speech has gone unpunctuated. For

example at MS Cotton Vitelius A XV (the manuscript containing Beowulf) f 137r, there is a

transition from the Beowulf poet’s voice to the voice of a character, the cliff warden, after a verb

of saying ‘frægn’ (‘asked’). This transition is marked only with a dot, the same symbol that

punctuates elsewhere ends of various sentences and clauses. The warden is reported with a direct

question in the present tense ‘hƿæt syndon ge…’ (‘what are you…?’), and the indexicals ‘ge’ (2nd

person plural, ‘you’) and ‘Ic’ (1st singular, ‘I’) refer to the warden’s interlocutors and the warden,

respectively.

Even into the 18th century, quotation marks were not always used by printers.

Tho’ my Mother refused to move it to my Father, yet as I have heard afterwards,

she reported all the Discourse to him, and that my Father, after shewing a great

Concern at it, said to her with a Sigh, That Boy might be happy if he would stay at

4

home, but if he goes abroad he will be the miserablest Wretch that was ever born:

I can give no Consent to it. [Robinson Crusoe, W. Taylor, 1719 1st Edition: 6]

The final ‘I’ here refers to the reported speaker, Crusoe’s father, and ‘he’ refers to the (fictional)

author of the passage, Crusoe.

These examples show at least this: current conventions regarding quotation marks are

recent. For the first thousand years English has been written, there were no such marks (or they

served purposes other than our contemporary ones). Nevertheless, readers had little trouble

working out the referents of indexicals including ones “shifted” to the reported speaker’s context.

The supposed inability to get “shifted” readings from written reports without quotation marks

(Cappelen & Lepore, 2007: 55-56) is a malady that uniquely affects present-day readers.

One early use of so-called “quotation marks” in printing was commonplacing. Between

the 17th and 19th Centuries, the educated classes in Britain and America were taught to keep

commonplace books, something like a book of quotations (“commonplaces”) compiled

individually by their owner, though these books could also contain things like statistics,

measurement conversions, and other information. Commonplace books were a status symbol,

signifying the refinement and erudition of their owners. They could be used as a source of

meditation on profound thoughts, or a means for finding a choice quote in the age before the

internet. Francis Bacon reportedly used his commonplace book to prepare for his speeches.

The demand for wise words to fill up one’s commonplace book was high enough that

printers used commonplace marks—inverted double commas—to indicate passages worthy of

copying. Editions of Shakespeare were common targets. In this example from Shakespeare’s

Measure for Measure, the printer has marked Isabella’s statement of the play’s theme, as she

chooses to refuse Angelo’s request to exchange her virginity for her brother’s life:

Then Isabell live chaste, and brother die;

“More then our Brother, is our Chastitie.

Ile tell him yet of Angelo’s request,

And fit his minde to death, for his soules rest.3

3 Example from Estill (2014), who cites Mr Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies

(London: Isaac Iaggard and Ed. Blount, 1623). Note that here, there are no closing Q-marks, only

5

Commonplace marks thus had the function of “reverse quotation marks” in that they did not

indicate which parts of a text had been copied from elsewhere (had been quoted), but rather

indicated which parts of a text you were supposed to copy (to quote).

Still today there are texts that are intended to be copied and re-purposed—chain emails

and so-called “copypasta”—but the practice of explicitly marking such texts has fallen out of

favor. Commonplacing is an evolutionary dead end on the radiation of functions of “quotation

marks” during the early days of printing.

In order to distinguish between the marks and their function, which is only sometimes

quotation, I will call the inverted double commas “Q-marks.” The earliest practice of Q-marking

printed quotations differed from the present-day practice in some notable ways, ways that I will

argue matter for the theory of quotation.4

The first relevant feature of direct and mixed quotation in the 18th century novel is that it

subsumes most of our contemporary practice. So, for example, there are standard indirect quotes

(1) and indirect questions (2) that are punctuated roughly as we would punctuate them today (the

exception being that the indirect questions end with a question mark). Then there are standard

direct quotations (3), accounting for the majority of quotations. Finally, there are plenty of mixed

quotations, such as (4) and (5).5

(1) …For sometimes he said, he looked

on himself as still married, and considered his

Wife as only gone a little before him… [vol. I, p. 6]

the second line in the example is commonplaced. If more than one line were commonplaced,

they too would contain opening Q-marks at the beginning (and no closing Q-marks).4 In what follows in this section, all examples are taken from Henry Fielding’s The History of

Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), unless otherwise noted. For Volumes I and III, I have used the

1750 A. Millar edition and for Volume II the 1769 A. Millar edition, all available on Google

Books.5 In the works I examined, mentioning an expression is not effected by putting quote marks

around it. So-called pure quotation has a distinct origin from direct and mixed quotation, or so it

seems.

6

(2) Mrs. Miller then asked what was to be done with Blifil?

(3) ‘ I wish,’ answered the surgeon, ‘ I could

‘ assure your being well in a month or two.

‘ …’ [vol. II, p. 186]

(4) Upon this, Jones related to him the whole

Truth, and earnestly begged him not to punish

the poor Soldier, ‘ who, I am confident,’ says

he, ‘ is as innocent of the Ensign's Escape, as he

‘ is of forging any Lie, or of endeavouring to

‘ impose on you.’ [vol. II, p. 169]

(5) nay, Cicero reports them to have been ‘ incredi-

‘ bly childish.’ [vol. II, p. 78]

But there is no shortage of examples that are at first instance tough to parse for the contemporary

reader6,7:

(6) Jones1 answered with a Sigh, ‘ He1 feared it was

‘ already too late for Caution;’ [vol. I, p. 264]

In (6), Tom is alone with Sophia, who has just warned him to be cautious. He presumably says,

“I fear it is already too late for caution,” but these are not the words Fielding uses to report him.

Instead, the tense progression is altered to follow the main verb ‘answer’ and the pronoun is

changed to the third-person form.

6 Henceforth, I will index co-referring terms when necessary for clarity.7 As a curiosity for the reader, Lynne Truss in her popular book on punctuation, Eats, Shoots,

and Leaves, presents one of these unusual uses of quote marks by Fielding as an example of

correct punctuation, seemingly oblivious to its (current) unacceptability. See p. 155.

7

We might suspect that Fielding is just putting quote marks around indirect discourse, but

again there is no shortage of forms like (1) with indirect discourse but no quote marks. We might

suspect that Fielding is just not being meticulous in his use of the marks, but three facts belie this

claim: first, never once does Fielding fail to put quotation marks around a direct quotation. It

would be strange then for him to accidentally forget to do so for a large number of indirect

quotations. Second, consider this fragment of quote from Mr. Allworthy:

(7) ‘… I cannot avoid saying,

‘ there is no Part of your Conduct which I re-

‘ sent more than your ill Treatment of that good

‘ young Man (meaning Blifil) who hath behaved

‘ with so much Tenderness and Honour towards

‘ you.’ [vol. II, p. 58]

Fielding isn’t being sloppy in his use of quote marks. When he adds words that the original

speaker did not use, he puts them in parentheses. This is someone who cares about distinguishing

what he, as narrator, says, from what his characters say. Third, the existence of mixed quotations

highly suggests that a careful distinction is being made by the use of quote marks.

Some useful context may be provided by (8). Here, Master Blifil is protesting that he

didn’t provoke Tom into assaulting him, so the “his mouth” is the mouth of Blifil. Fielding

reports the content of what Blifil said (that he had made use of no such appellation)—without

quoting it, because again, it’s just the content. Then he goes on to report what Blifil “added.” The

addition here is not more content, because it’s roughly Blifil just saying that he had made use of

no such appellation. Instead, Fielding is reporting the words that Blifil used in his protests. That’s

Blifil’s “heaven forbid” and Blifil’s “should ever” and Blifil’s exclamation point. Fielding is

reporting Blifil’s speech verbatim—except for the personal pronoun (and perhaps the tense of

‘should’).

(8) he1 positively insisted, that he1 had made Use

of no such Appellation ; adding, ‘ Heaven forbid

‘ such naughty Words should ever come out of

8

‘ his1 Mouth.’ [vol I, pp. 123-124]

Other examples seem to attest to this general view, that quotation in these cases suggests

verbatim reporting, with grammatical alterations. For example, in (9), it seems unlikely that

Fielding is calling Tom “that fine spark” – this is the petty-fogger speaking:

(9) Jones1 had no sooner quitted the room, than

the Petty-fogger, in a whispering tone, asked

Mrs. Whitefield2, ‘ If she2 knew who that fine

‘ Spark1 was?’ [vol. II, p. 214]

Example (9), like (10) and (11), also shows that quote marks sometimes appear around what

otherwise seem like indirect questions, though as (2) demonstrates, not for every indirect

question.

(10) …He1 then con-

cluded by asking, ‘ who that Partridge was, whom

‘ he2 had called a worthless Fellow?’ [vol. I, p. 82]

(11) …she1 asked her2, ‘ How

‘ she2 had the Assurance to mention her1 Name

‘ with Disrespect?’ [vol. II, p. 116]

In many instances, the grammar seems to force the indirect forms within the quotation. So, for

example, in (12), pronouns referring to the speaker are in the third person and ‘beg’ takes an

infinitival complement, which is not the language with which one begs. But since Fielding is

reporting what Sophia said (amended only for grammatical purposes), he puts quote marks

around it and continues in the next sentence to standard direct quoting.

(12) …she1 begged him2, ‘ not to

‘ make her1 the most miserable Creature on Earth

9

‘ by forcing her1 to marry a Man whom she1 de-

‘ tested. This I1 entreat of you2, dear Sir,’ said

she1, ‘ for your2 Sake, as well as my1 own, since

‘ you2 are so very kind to tell me1 your2 Happiness

‘ depends on mine1.’ [vol. II, p. 38]

We see something similar in (13) with ‘entreat’; here Fielding follows with more indirect speech

imposed by the complementizer ‘that’ (which disprefers direct speech). It’s also worth noting

that when Fielding is reporting what someone is “adding” or “urging” or “saying” (the gerund

participle) we often get the indirect forms, with quotation marks. This may be grammatical in

nature as well.

(13) She1 entreated her Aunt, ‘ to have Mercy

‘ upon her1, and not to resent so cruelly her1 Unwilling-

‘ ness to make herself1 miserable; often urging

‘ that she1 alone was concerned, and that her1

‘ Happiness only was at Stake.’ [vol. II, p. 86]

The data then are these. Quote marks always appear around direct forms and sometimes appear

around indirect forms in 18th century novels.8 Quote marks around indirect forms seem to

indicate that the speech contained therein is reported verbatim, with the exception of necessary

grammatical changes in pronouns, in the tense, in word order (for indirect questions) and in

forms of address.9 The reasons for choosing indirect forms in these cases are sometimes but

8 Let me be clear that I mean “some 18th Century novels.” Q-mark usage was highly non-

standardized at this point in time. For example, in 1766 both The Count of Otranto and The

Vicar of Wakefield were published; the former uses no Q-marks and the latter uses Q-marks

more or less as we do (but with a new left quote at the beginning of each new line). So there is

no one usage to be analyzed, just different practices amongst different writers and editors.9 “Sir,” which appears frequently in direct quotes in Tom Jones, never once appears in a quoted

indirect form. I should also note that none of Fielding’s eye-dialect from French or German

characters shows up quoted in indirect forms either.

10

clearly not always grammatical. It is also possible, as I’ll suggest, that indirect reporting is not

seen by these authors as incompatible with verbatim reporting.

3 Meaning as Use (for Punctuation)

Suppose we live in a society where each individual x obeys rule (1). Furthermore, it’s common

knowledge that the rule is obeyed. I won’t assume that it’s a convention, because it’s not clear

what coordination problem obeying the rule solves (Lewis 1969). Today we observe that Jeb is

wearing a pink and white polka-dotted hat. We reason:

1. For all x, x wears a pink and white polka-dotted hat when and only when it’s x’s birthday.

[Common knowledge]

2. Therefore, Jeb wears a pink and white polka-dotted hat when and only when it’s Jeb’s

birthday. [1, universal elimination]

3. Jeb is wearing a pink and white polka-dotted hat. [Observation]

4. Therefore, it’s Jeb’s birthday. [2, 3, biconditional elimination]

Now, we don’t live in a society where everyone obeys this particular rule, but the case illustrates

how we can acquire information from individuals by observing their non-linguistic behavior,

when this behavior is governed by rules everyone is presumed to obey.

We do live in a society where most individuals, on most occasions, obey the following

rule: x places Q-marks around all and only quotations of sufficient length. Indeed, there are

institutional forces in our society that police conformity to this rule: students are failed, or even

expelled, people have their degrees revoked, books are pulled from the shelves, and writers lose

careers for not properly punctuating quotations with Q-marks (or other devices of indicating

quotation). So we can and do reason as follows: Suppose Davidson writes:

Quine said quotation … “has a certain anomalous feature.”

1. For all x, x places Q-marks around all and only quotations of sufficient length. [Common

knowledge]

11

2. Therefore, Davidson places Q-marks around quotations of sufficient length. [1, universal

elimination]

3. Davidson placed Q-marks around the words “has a certain anomalous feature.” [Observation]

4. Therefore, Davidson’s use of “has a certain anomalous feature” was a quotation. [2, 3,

biconditional elimination]

Let me make a few remarks here. First, in order to explain how quotation marks signal content to

readers, it is unnecessary to assume they are linguistic in nature or that they have semantic

content, or affect semantic content. The fact that the analogue of quotation marks doesn’t occur

in speech; that the first 1,000 years of English writing did not have any such marks; and that all

writing systems outside the European writing systems lack or have borrowed these or similar

devices from Europe strongly suggests to me that Q-marks do not articulate some unpronounced

linguistic element, but instead are recently invented decorations of written material that signal

much the way the polka-dotted hat signals in our earlier example. Q-marks are punctuation

marks.10

I’ll make a somewhat more explicit argument. I assume that there is some level of

linguistic representation in the mind at which things like the syntactic structure of a sentence are

represented, as well as the identities of the lexical items that occupy that structure. Call these

things that are represented at this level “linguistic items.” Furthermore, I assume that only

linguistic items contribute to the meanings of sentences. Meanings are assigned by compositional

mental processes that take the meanings of the lexical items and compose them in a certain way

that respects the grammatical structure they inhabit. Spoken and written items that don’t

articulate linguistic items are thus not relevant to sentence meanings. Q-marks don’t articulate

linguistic items. They don’t articulate syntactic structures, at least not on any syntactic theory

I’m aware of. Furthermore, they don’t articulate lexical items. The evidence for this claim is that

no lexical item freely appears in all syntactic positions, but as the data from mixed quotation

demonstrates, Q-marks can appear anywhere, even surrounding non-constituents. Therefore, on

the model I’ve elaborated, Q-marks are irrelevant for assigning semantic contents to sentences.

10 Several of the theses here are defended by others in the literature. Washington (1992) holds

that quotation marks are punctuation marks; Wertheimer (1999) denies that they have semantic

values; and Saka (2011) entertains the thesis that they are non-linguistic marks.

12

This is fine: as we’ve seen, an explanation of how Q-marks nevertheless succeed in conveying

information to readers does not require that they have a semantic effect, or articulate a linguistic

item that has a semantic effect.

Depending on one’s view of pragmatics, it may follow that the content conveyed by Q-

marked quotations is pragmatically conveyed (for instance, if one’s view is that pragmatics is

whatever is not semantics). But it is important to see that this content isn’t conveyed by standard

types of pragmatic mechanisms, such as presupposition or implicature. I’ve argued for this

before (see Johnson 2011), so here I’ll just remark that with regard to presupposition, quotation

entailments don’t project out of the antecedents of conditionals or over negation, like

presuppositions do; and with regard to conversational implicature, quotation entailments aren’t

cancelable11, as implicatures are. The mechanism of content conveyance is the one elaborated

above: There are rules of punctuation that, in most contexts, writers are presumed to obey.

Institutional pressures and sometimes paid agents (i.e. copyeditors) police compliance with these

rules. This widespread compliance licenses inferences about, for example, which turns of phrase

a writer takes to be quotations. To give the meaning of a punctuation mark is to say how it is to

be used.

But the rules are never so simple. I have stated the rule for Q-marking quotations as

follows: place Q-marks around all and only quotations of sufficient length. And I have defined

quotation as follows: repeating someone’s words. But we frequently Q-mark expressions that are

not completely faithful reproductions of others’ words. Quotation is a balancing act. The original

speaker of some phrase spoke at a particular time, in a particular language, to a particular

audience. When we quote that speaker, we occupy a different context. We must therefore

balance our duty of faithfulness to the reported speaker with our (potentially) conflicting duties

to our audience, such as to speak in language that is intelligible, grammatical, and polite.

11 The example from Johnson (2011) is this:

Alice told me, “snow is white.” #But she didn’t utter ‘snow is white’ or any of its

translations into foreign languages.

I of course made the example up; negative evidence, by its nature, does not occur in the wild. In

my opinion the burden is on the theorist who thinks quotation entailments are conversationally

implicated to produce compelling examples of cancelation, which abound for standard cases of

conversational implicatures.

13

For example, we Q-mark translations of the words of non-English speakers into English,

as in (14):

(14) Nietzsche said, “God is dead!”

Q-marks can thus appear around words and phrases that the attributed speaker never said in the

strictest sense. In the strictest sense, Nietzsche said, “Gott ist todt!” but no one bats an eye, in

most contexts, if we report Nietzsche with (14). (14) is frequently preferable, as our interlocutors

might not know what Nietzsche meant when he said, “Gott ist todt!” if that’s how we report him

(Cappelen & Lepore 2007: ch. 5).

There are other reasons we choose to alter texts and still accept those texts as verbatim

reproductions (in the strictest sense that meets our needs). Profanity taboos are quite powerful in

our society—even the paper of record sacrifices accuracy in its direct quotations for the sake of

avoiding words like ‘fuck,’ as exhibited in (15).

(15) “I’m like, ‘What are you doing?’” he recalled shouting, using his own expletive. (New York

Times, June 27, 2014)

I assume the target of the quote is something like, “What the fuck are you doing?” Such an

inference requires the background knowledge that the Grey Lady would print ‘What the hell are

you doing?’ but wouldn’t print ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ unless the latter were spoken by

the president, as well as knowledge of the fact that the reported speaker is not the president. As I

said, the rules are never so simple.

It’s also a regular journalistic practice to report statements like (16) (taken from the

comments section of a sports website)—especially when spoken—in more Standard English like

(17).

(16) Bron is good. Probably top 20 all time. But he no MJ neither man.

(17) The commenter said that LeBron James is “good. Probably top twenty all time. But he is no

MJ [Michael Jordan] either.”

14

Preserving the non-standard dialect features of (16) (negative concordance, copula omission) in

the report (17) can be viewed as racist and/or classist. First, non-standard dialect features, though

present among whites and non-whites, are disproportionately quoted verbatim for non-whites,

and can present them as uneducated. Second, the quoted speakers may be perfectly competent

with standard English; preserving the nonstandard dialect features may be a form of

inappropriately taking the speaker out of context: presenting his or her claims to an audience in a

way that person would not themselves present those claims to that audience. However that may

be, newspaper policy often requires “clean up” of quotes like (16).

We correct slips of grammar that are obvious slips and that would be needlessly

embarrassing. We remove verbal mannerisms such as ‘ahs’, routine vulgarities

and meaningless repetitions. Otherwise we do not revise quotations. [The

Canadian Press’ Stylebook]

The rule for quote marks is something like: if a passage contains the exact words some speaker

used, altered only (if at all) for sufficient reasons that are generally recognized as sufficient

reasons to alter a verbatim report (such as translation to the reporter’s language, avoiding taboo

language, and cleaning up infelicities and non-standard dialect features), then put quote marks

around the speech report. This, incidentally, explains the unsystematic nature of the types of

alterations allowed within quote marks. Cappelen & Lepore (2007), for instance, chalk the lack

of systematicity up to a complicated, uncharacterizable “saying relation.” Locating the special

exceptions to verbatim reporting in the rules for using quotation marks feels more natural, and as

we shall see, helps to better understand variation through history.

I think we can understand the 18th century novel data as conforming to the same rule that

we conform to today. The difference for Fielding is that, for example, the dictates of English

grammar are sufficient reason (for him) to put words within quote marks that the speaker didn’t

use. When Fielding decides to report Sophia’s utterance (18), he balances several considerations.

(18) Don’t make me the most miserable creature on earth by forcing me to marry a man whom I

detest.

15

A maximally faithful report (19) is unfortunately marked: ‘beg’ doesn’t take finite complements.

(19) She begged him “don’t make me the most miserable creature on earth by forcing me to

marry a man whom I detest.”

Thus he chooses an indirect form, grammatically appropriate to the circumstances (20):

(20) [S]he begged him “not to make her the most miserable creature on earth by forcing her to

marry a man whom she detested.”

The quotation marks are retained because the quoted material is still what Sophia said, altered

only as much as compelling and sufficient reason demands12 (just as we today translate, omit

profanities, or alter dialect forms).

Even after quote marks stopped appearing around indirect forms like these that we’d now

leave bare authors like Jane Austen retained them for free indirect discourse, as this passage from

Sense and Sensibility (1811) illustrates. Every third-person singular pronoun in (21) refers to Mr.

John Dashwood:

(21) The prospect of four thousand a-year, in addition to his present income, besides the

remaining half of his own mother's fortune, warmed his heart, and made him feel capable of

generosity.— “Yes, he would give them three thousand pounds: it would be liberal and

12 Why is the pronoun ‘me’ shifted to ‘her’? Not for grammatical reasons, as an anonymous

reviewer points out. Though I talk of ‘altering’ forms for sufficient reasons, that perhaps is not

the best model. Rather, Q-marking is more of an ex post facto endeavor. What gets written is

standard speech with a mix of direct and indirect forms: “she begged him not to make her the

most miserable creature… This I entreat of you…” Then, afterwards, the question is where the

Q-marks go. Here, they go around the indirect forms, because other than their indirectness,

everything is as the original speaker said it.

16

handsome! It would be enough to make them completely easy. Three thousand pounds! he could

spare so considerable a sum with little inconvenience.”13

Our current quotation practice has no way of indicating how close a correspondence there is

between indirect forms in speech reports and the original direct forms.

Cappelen & Lepore (2007) and Johnson & Lepore (2013) adopt the view that “what these

cases [like (14)-(17)] teach us is no more than something about the conditions under which a

speaker can stand in a saying relation to a certain quoted item” (Cappelen & Lepore 2007: 47).

But I think this is perhaps not the best way to understand the data historically. On such a view,

either the saying relation itself has changed since the 18th century (!) or the meaning of ‘say’ and

every other verb that can be followed with direct quotes has changed since the 18 th century;

neither of which possibilities strike me as particularly compelling. Alternatively, we can instead

see the data as telling us about the rules that govern punctuating reported speech with quote

marks.

Indeed, we can understand why Fielding and Austen faced a different calculus of

markedness and faithfulness than we of contemporary practice face. Q-marks were introduced to

indicate quotations in novels. Though we still use them for this purpose, our practice is more

centered around journalism and scholarship. There is a strong moral obligation to report

faithfully the subjects of news items and the scholarly work of other researchers. No such moral

obligation attends to accurate reporting of fictional characters by their creators. Thus it is

unsurprising that early use of Q-marks tended toward less faithful, but less marked forms.

In conclusion, Q-marks are a type of punctuation mark. To give their meaning is to state

how they are to be used. One of their purposes is to indicate quotations (hence their common

name: quotation marks). But the practice of quotation itself can involve conflicting obligations:

an obligation to faithfully report the quoted speaker, and an obligation to speak intelligibly,

grammatically, and politely to one’s audience. Over time, as the practice of Q-marking

quotations has moved from its limited role in the Bible, to a broader role in the novel, to writing

in all formal contexts, our views of our obligations have changed, particularly of our duty to

fidelity, and this is reflected in the change in our Q-marking practice over time.

13 I haven’t found an earlier edition yet, but the quote marks are present in an 1833 edition

published by Richard Bentley, p. 3.

17

4 Quotation Is Using Someone’s Words

There are lots of “theories of quotation,” and a number of them, in my view, conflate two,

historically distinct uses of Q-marks. As a result, these theories miss what I believe to be a

fundamental feature of quotation, namely, that in quoting, we do not merely repeat the words of

someone, but we re-use them.

In a separate historical development, Q-marks came to be used to indicate when words

are being used to refer to a linguistic object associated with them, such as their written form,

their meaning, or perhaps themselves. Consider two examples:

(22) Das Leben ist kein Ponyhof. This is a very common expression in German that means “life

isn’t a place for riding ponies.”14

(23) As X notes in the comments, it's not fake as in “created by photoshop”, but it IS fake in the

sense of being added as an ironic joke by a company known for such things.15

In example (22), the speaker wishes to refer to the meaning of the German expression ‘Das

Leben ist kein Ponyhof,’ and does so by using a Q-marked English expression that has that

meaning. In example (23), the writer wants to distinguish two senses of the word ‘fake’ when

applied to a photo. One of the senses is named by a definite description: ‘the sense of being

added as an ironic joke’; the other sense is named by a Q-marked expression that has that sense.

Indeed, there is a broad practice of using Q-marked expressions to refer to words or

similar objects (like word types, or spellings).

(24) More so than most words, “as” can be translated to Spanish in many ways — probably

dozens, and you often can't substitute one of them for another.16

14 From “23 German Slang Words Your Textbook Isn’t Teaching You,”

www.fluentu.com/german/blog/ , 2015.15 From “Helpful Label,” http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/ , 7 July 2014.16 From “Translating ‘As’ to Spanish,”

http://spanish.about.com/od/translationsfromenglish/a/as.htm.

18

(25) Some do spell it “Emmenthal” as well, but that's not the way it is spelt in Switzerland where

the original comes from.17

In example (25), the pronoun ‘it’ refers to the name ‘Emmental’ (prior context makes this clear)

and ‘Emmenthal’ enclosed in Q-marks refers to one spelling of that name.

The typological limitations of early printing practices have unfortunate echoes into the

present day. Q-marks have been used for many, diverse purposes: quotation, commonplacing,

distancing, reference to linguistic objects, and so on. But it’s important not to conflate these

different uses18, which are governed by distinct rules. In examples (22)-(25) above, no quotations

occur. People have indeed said “created by photoshop” and “as” and “Emmenthal” and “life isn’t

a place for riding ponies,” but the writers here are not quoting any of those people. Instead, they

are using linguistic expressions to refer to linguistic objects that are related to those expressions.

A separate punctuation rule directs us to Q-mark these expressions as well. But this doesn’t make

them quotations and more importantly, it doesn’t make quotations references to linguistic

expressions.

Indeed, in my opinion, this is the fundamental feature of quotation. When we quote

someone, we don’t just produce words they previously produced, and consider those words as

some uninterpreted formal object. We use those words. We use them to characterize the contents

of assertions and beliefs; we use them to assert, to express propositions, to refer to objects. We

17 Comment on “Kennedy Town Hamburger” on Hong Kong Geo Expat Forums by user PDLM,

https://hongkong.geoexpat.com/forum/321/thread29393.html , 26 July 2008.18 To fully substantiate the claim that these uses are historically separate would require us to

show that they appeared at different points in history. Unfortunately (a) reference to linguistic

objects is not exceedingly common and (b) historians of punctuation are very interested in

quotation, but not in so-called pure quotation. So I can tell you that the first attestation of quote

marks used to indicate direct speech is in 1574, in a book of poems called The Mirour for

Magistrates (Houston 2016), but I don’t have a single instance of pure quotation before the 19 th

Century. In what context it first appeared and whether it was used alongside other types of Q-

marks is, as far as I’m aware, an open question.

19

use them in our context, and we are responsible for providing them with sufficient context to be

interpretable.

The evidence that this is so has been with us since the beginning of analytic investigation

into the phenomenon. Davidson (1979) taught us that in mixed quotation, the quoted expressions

couldn’t be interpreted as reference to a linguistic object.19 For example, consider (26):

(26) He described the 2-iron as being “very important and instrumental in my success here.”20

Mickelson, the reported speaker in (26), did not describe the 2-iron as being an expression, he

described it as being important and instrumental to his success in the British Open links course.

But the report is not false, as the quoted expression is being used and not merely mentioned.

Still, there are holdouts. Recanati (2001), for example, maintains that direct quotations21 are

“closed’ and do involve reference to a linguistic object. As I’ve emphasized, I think such views

miss the fundamental feature of quotation.

Here I will present three arguments that quotation, mixed or direct, involves re-using the

words of someone, not referring to those words. The first involves propositional-attitude reports.

Recall the rule for punctuating quotations: if you repeat someone’s words, Q-mark them. Since

one excellent way of characterizing someone’s beliefs is using the words with which they

expressed those beliefs, we find Q-marked sentences as the object of propositional-attitude verbs,

as in (27):

19 I am not here endorsing Davidson’s positive account, which I think also misses the

fundamental feature of quotation, merely giving him credit for the (obviously correct, in

retrospect) argument that mixed quotation cannot be treated as solely referential.20 “On British Open links courses, irons take on added importance,” Associated Press, 16 July

2014.21 By “direct quotation,” I mean of course sentences of the form SPEAKER + VERBA DICENDI

+ Q-MARKED SENTENCE. Recanati’s “open quotations” are not closed, but here I’m taking

issue with his view that the other direct quotations are closed.

20

(27) Thomas Jefferson believed “the Earth is given as a common stock for men to labour and live

on.”22

Here, the sentence, “the Earth is given as a common stock for men to labour and live on,” cannot

coherently be thought of as referring to a linguistic expression. People don’t believe sentences.

However, the contents of their beliefs can be reported by sentences. In (27), the sentence “the

Earth is given as a common stock for men to labour and live on” characterizes the content of

Jefferson’s belief. It’s put in quote marks because it’s a quote from Jefferson.

Second, consider the case of parenthetical attribution. In standard speech reports, the

attributed content is not asserted. However, suppose we wish to assert something using someone

else’s words. We do this in English with an aside like: as/like so-and-so said, as in (28):

(28) The way Palestinians are treated by Israel can therefore be characterized as injustice. And as

Martin Luther King said ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere’.23

This quote is taken from a pro-Palestine, anti-Israel website. (I am not endorsing any political

positions in this paper.) It is clear that the author is arguing that injustice in Palestine is a threat

to justice everywhere. He asserts as much by using Dr. King’s words, and parenthetically

attributing them. Parenthetical attribution is used in any cases where we want to use someone

else’s words for some purpose other than characterizing what they said or thought, not just cases

of assertion. For example, consider (29):

(29) If, as Einstein said, “Play is the highest form of research” I am going to do A LOT of

research this year! [tweet from Dr. Cyndi Burnett]

22 http://www.wealthandwant.com/docs/Foldvary_UTR.htm The Ultimate Tax Reform: Public

Revenue from Land Rent by Fred E. Foldvary, January 200623 Adri Neuwhof, “The legacy of Martin Luther King: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice

everywhere,” Electronic Intifada, https://electronicintifada.net/content/legacy-martin-luther-king-

injustice-anywhere-threat-justice-everywhere/6829.

21

Here again, the quote is used and not for the purpose of reporting Einstein’s speech. The truth-

conditions of the quote are not the same as “if Einstein said, ‘Play is the highest form of

research,’ then Dr. Burnett is going to do a lot of research this year.” What Dr. Burnett instead

said is that if play is the highest form of research then she is going to do a lot of research (in

virtue of her playing a lot). The quote marks indicate that she is quoting and the prepositional

phrase “as Einstein says” attributes that quote to Einstein, but the function of Dr. Burnett’s

utterance is not primarily a speech report of Einstein.

Sports reporting is a good place to study quotation. A sports reporter is tasked with telling

a story about something with no inherent narrative structure: a sports match. To establish a

narrative, the writer brings in the emotions, thoughts, intentions, and reactions of players and

coaches, typically from interviews before and after the match. These quotes are then interwoven

into the story the writer tells. Importantly, the quotes don’t just hang there uninterpreted: quotes

that contain context-sensitive expressions are provided context by the reporter so they can be

interpreted as part of the story. Additionally, the quotes introduce new individuals and events

into the narrative, and those objects are then subsequently available for anaphoric reference.

(30) The Spurs knew their defense had to be better… They held Miami to 35 percent in the first

half. “They played great and I can honestly say I don't think any of us were expecting this type of

performance,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.24

Here, we know that Spoelstra’s ‘they’ refers to the Spurs, the current topic in the article. We

know that his ‘this type of performance’ refers to the Spurs holding Miami to 35 percent field

goal percentage in the first half. We’re not just being told some words that Spoelstra uttered,

we’re given the context to interpret it, and we do. Those interpretations become part of the

discourse, available for subsequent use:

(31) The Stanley Cup Final hasn't ended in a sweep since 1998, when the Detroit Red Wings did

it against the Washington Capitals. “Nothing is done, nothing is finished,” Quick said. “We still

24 “Spurs take 3-1 lead with 107-86 victory over Heat,” Brian Mahoney, nba.com, 13 June 2014.

22

have a lot of work to do.” Not as much as they would have had if Quick didn't come through

with a vintage performance.25

Here we have a direct quote from Quick, “We still have a lot of work to do.” This licenses an

anaphor in Rosen’s next sentence. Quick’s ‘we’, referring to his team the Kings, licenses

Rosen’s ‘they’ anaphorically referring also to the Kings. If the direct quote didn’t contain a

reference to the Kings, then the only objects anaphorically available for Rosen would have been

the previously mentioned Red Wings and Capitals. Additionally, two ellipses in Rosen’s

sentence “Not as much (work) as they would have had (to do)” are licensed by Quick’s ‘work’

and ‘to do’, respectively.

An anonymous reviewer helpfully suggests that it might be unclear how the data in (30)

and (31) are objections to alternative accounts. For example, on demonstrative theories, while the

Q-marked material is not taken to be a syntactic or semantic part of the sentence, it still exists,

with its syntax and semantics. But noticeably, merely demonstrated linguistic material does not,

for example, introduce discourse referents. Imagine a poster on the wall saying “We still have a

lot of work to do.” Now consider (31’):

(31’) ???Quick said that. Not as much as they would have had.

Discourse referents can’t be introduced or retrieved by linguistic material simply in the vicinity

of a discourse—they must be introduced or retrieved by material used in that discourse.

So let me revise the definition of quotation I’ve been working with: quotation is re-using

the words of someone,26 It’s taking those words from their original context, and using them in a

new context, with the attendant obligations of providing context for interpretability, and the

25 “Kings blank Rangers, move within one win of Cup,” Dan Rosen, nhl.com, 10 June 2014.26 This is actually too strong, I believe. For example, the numbered sentences and passages that

appear in this paper as examples are not used by me, but they are quotations. My reason for

asserting the stronger thesis, however, is that I think “normal” cases of quotation in literature and

journalism and scholarship are uses of the quoted material. Only in special cases—like in

linguistics and philosophy of language—do we repeat the words of others in order to examine

them as formal objects.

23

attendant effects of introducing objects and events into the discourse. This can be obscured by

the separate use of Q-marks to punctuate reference by linguistic items to related linguistic items,

and it can be obscured by the fact that quotations are most frequently used in speech reports. But

we can assert quoted material and we can use it to help tell our stories—to introduce objects and

events into them.

5 Shifty Indexicals

In direct and mixed quotations, context-sensitive expressions behave unusually. Consider the

quotation in (32):

(32) After beginning with a serious assessment of Wainwright’s pitches, Jeter pivoted suddenly.

“I don’t know, man,” he said, to laughter.27

The standard story regarding the indexical ‘I’ is that its use is governed by a strict rule,

that it always refers to the speaker who uses it. (32) is taken from an article written by Tyler

Kepner, but ‘I’ as it occurs in (32) does not refer to Kepner, but rather to the reported speaker,

Jeter. Additionally, Kepner’s report of Jeter is in the non-past tense, which ordinarily requires

that it describe a state or event that is not in the past. But the reported content is true as long as

Jeter didn’t know at the time of the interview, before the time at which Kepner wrote the article.

On a mere mention account of direct quotation, there’s no conflict between the characters

and the behavior of the indexicals in (32), 'I' and the non-past tense marker:

There is a way to control an indexical, to keep it from taking primary scope, and

even to refer it to another context (this amounts to changing its character). Use

quotation marks. If we mention the indexical rather than use it we can, of course,

operate directly on it. [Kaplan, 1989, emphasis original: 510-511]

According to a mere mention account, (32) merely mentions an expression of Jeter’s: the words

‘I’ and ‘don’t’ are not used in (32), and ipso facto they are not used unusually.

27 “Jeter Takes Advantage, So Does the American League,” Tyler Kepner, New York Times, 16

July 2014.

24

But, as I’ve argued, quotations are re-uses of someone’s words. They aren’t referred to

another context, we use them in the one we’re in. Thus Kaplan’s proposed mechanism by which

the character of a quoted indexical can change is unavailable to us.

There’s another proposal in the literature for how the character of a quoted indexical can

change: this is the “monster account” of Cumming (2003) and Bittner (2007). Cumming and

Bittner reject Kaplan’s view that there are no “monsters,” that is, character-shifting operators, in

natural language. Indeed, on their view, Q-marks in quotations articulate these operators. There

are two reasons I don’t endorse the monster account, one theoretical and the other empirical. On

the theoretical front, I have argued that Q-marks can’t articulate any linguistic item, and thus

can’t have semantic effects. The empirical argument once again has to do with the neglected

historical data. Recall (12), repeated here:

(12) …she1 begged him2, ‘ not to

‘ make her1 the most miserable Creature on Earth

‘ by forcing her1 to marry a Man whom she1 de-

‘ tested. This I1 entreat of you2, dear Sir,’ said

she1, ‘ for your2 Sake, as well as my1 own, since

‘ you2 are so very kind to tell me1 your2 Happiness

‘ depends on mine1.’ [vol. II, p. 38]

In a single quotation, both third-person pronouns (her, she) and a first-person pronoun (I) refer to

one and the same person. Both past (detested) and present (entreat) forms are used to refer to one

and the same time. It’s true that no account of present-day quotation needs to make room for 18 th

century data. But as I’ve emphasized, there is a strong continuity between the practice of Q-

marking quotations in the 18th century and our present practice. It would be strange indeed if

radically different mechanisms were needed to explain the two practices.

So, what remains of our options? Here are three theses that stand in contradiction: (a) ‘I’

always refers to the speaker who uses it; (b) there are no character-shifting operators in natural

language; and (c) in some quotations, ‘I’ refers to someone other than the speaker who uses it.

Kaplan and other pure-mention theorists reject (c). The monster account rejects (b). I therefore

25

reject (a). ‘I’ doesn’t always refer to the speaker who uses it. Sometimes it refers to someone

else, and some of those times are in quotations.28

I suppose I can’t reject such a well-established principle as (a) without giving some

justification beyond, “it’s what my theory needs to be true.” So I want to engage in a brief

discussion of two common types of shiftiness within natural language.

One well-recognized phenomenon is called the historical present. This is a narrative

technique in which events that occurred in the past are referred to with the nonpast tense. For

example, here is Ophelia explaining to her father Polonius some odd, past behavior of Hamlet’s:

(33) He took me by the wrist and held me hard;

Then goes he to the length of all his arm;

And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow,

He falls to such perusal of my face

As he would draw it.

I’ve underlined the two non-past tense verbs Ophelia uses to describe the past events.

Importantly, Ophelia could have used the past tense with no change in referential meaning. She’s

not pretending to be in the past. Her context is the present and from within it, she is referring to

past events with the non-past tense. Wolfson (1989) analyzes performed narratives (people

telling stories) and finds that they seamlessly alternate between past and non-past in describing

the past events the stories are about. For example, in one story she analyzes, “there are 85 verbs

that could, according to their time orientation, have been in the CHP [conversational historical

present], and of these there are 57 that are realized in that tense” 141).29

In Wolfson (1989)’s view, which I share, the historical present (she uses “CHP”) is used

to partition the events of the story from one another. For example, the events in one story she

looks at take place on a boat, then on land, then back on the boat. The action on the boat is

characterized with the past tense, and the action on land with the non-past tense. She

28 See Jaszczolt & Huang (2017) for a position along these lines that invokes Default Semantics.29 Another revealing piece of evidence is that one and the same sentence can have both past tense

and historical present forms: “When we drove up, I see all these kids…” Example from Wolfson,

p. 146.

26

compellingly demonstrates that this partitioning function, and not enhanced drama by making

events seem more “present,” is the true function of using the historical present. For example, in

the boat story, the events characterized by the historical present are the least dramatic in the story

(p. 143).

One thing I want to note is the observation we began with regarding why Q-marks were

co-opted for a quote-indicating function in the first place. In novels, multiple speakers exchange

remarks, and it is necessary to indicate when one person’s speech ends and another’s begins.

When people started to write novels, such a device was needed. But without them, authors could

at least distinguish the narrator’s voice from that of the characters. Most 18 th century novels are

narrated in the past tense (but not, for example, epistolary novels). The present-tense forms

within direct quotations are themselves a means of partitioning what the characters say from

what the narrator says. This partitioning of contents may be one of the functions of so-called

direct quotation.

There’s another kind of shiftiness that more closely relates to indexicality and quotation.

It might be what Recanati (2001) calls “open quotation,” but I’m not sure. I’ll start with an

example of the phenomenon I’m thinking about. (34) is taken from a transcript of the show

Politically Incorrect, which is a late-night infotainment program hosted by Bill Maher. Maher is

asked why Judd Gregg, a Republican, accepted a position in Obama’s cabinet and then decided

subsequently to turn it down. He responds:

(34) Well, because it’s a big Washington job. I think it probably was a pay increase and a status

increase and I'm in the Cabinet. And then I guess his Republican friends got to him -- you know,

like the mob.

On my view, this is perhaps a case of quotation. As I said before, you can quote what someone

should have said or would have said. But I kind of doubt that Maher thinks Gregg would have

said, “I’m in the Cabinet,” had he been appointed to the Cabinet. Instead, I think this is a natural

sort of shiftiness we engage in when we do things like characterize others’ reasons. Maher is

asked to give Gregg’s reasons for his actions, and it’s quite natural in this circumstance to take

Gregg’s perspective, and use one’s pronouns as if one were Gregg.

27

While I said that this may be a case of Recanati’s “open quotation,” much of what Recanati

writes makes it difficult to tell. For example, many of Recanati’s definitions presume his views.

He says, “A quotation which is not closed is (as one might expect) open,” and “Whenever a

linguistic demonstration (a quotation) is recruited in this way and serves as a singular term,

filling a slot in the sentence, I say that the quotation is closed,” (649). There are a number of

issues here. First, as I indicated, I’m not sure (34) contains a quotation at all, so in that sense, it

would not be in the purview of Recanati’s “open quotation.” Second, when I consider Recanati’s

own examples, the cases he diagnoses as closed strike me as containing either no quotation or a

quotation, not used as a singular term. So if I were to apply the definitions given my own views,

most quotations would be open, but that doesn’t seem to be Recanati’s view. Normally, we might

turn to the examples an author gives of the phenomenon to help nail it down, but here again,

things are difficult. Recanati only positively characterizes one non-mixed-quotation case as an

open quotation:

(35) Stop that John! ‘Nobody likes me’, ‘I am miserable’... Don’t you think you exaggerate a bit?

The problem here is that this particular case seems like mockery, and that is definitely not the

phenomenon I’m interested in pointing to. When we mock others, we do repeat their words, but

we pretend to be them, and pretense doesn’t involve shifting terms’ referents. When I pretend

I’m Chuck Norris, my uses of ‘I’ all refer to me. It’s just that in the pretense, I’m Chuck Norris.

I’m rather interested in cases like (34), that seem to involve a shift in reference, engendered by

the explanatory position taken on by the speaker. I thus leave it to others to determine whether

the shiftiness I’m interested in is open quotation or not. Once again, it’s of note that

quotations are frequently used to characterize others’ speech acts and beliefs, and hence their

perspective. I doubt that in the standard case, direct speech reports involve the sort of

perspective-taking that results in Maher’s spontaneous shiftiness. My point in bringing up the

historical present and the spontaneous taking of other individuals’ perspectives is twofold: first,

they illustrate that the character of indexical expressions is more loosely constrained than might

first appear; and second, they show that speech and attitude reports involve the sorts of features

(partitioning parts of a narrative, characterizing people’s perspectives) that elsewhere help

28

engender shiftiness. This makes it somewhat more reasonable perhaps to suppose that speech and

attitude reports are yet a third case where such shiftiness can happen.

6 Conclusion

To quote is to re-use someone’s words (perhaps one’s own). This involves removing them from

their original context and using them in a new context, where they might be understood

differently. We thus must balance a pair of potentially conflicting duties: the duty to faithfully

report our sources and the duty to intelligibly report them to our audience.

For the first thousand years of English writing, there was no means of indicating when

some piece of writing was a quote. The Q-mark, before the 18 th century, was used with a wide

array of functions by printers, such as commonplacing. With the rise of the novel in the 18th

century, the Q-mark was co-opted into the function of signaling quoted speech; this helped

distinguish the varying voices of the characters, and the narrator. Early adopters of Q-marks

balanced their duties of fidelity and intelligibility in a different fashion than writers of today, but

the essential function of indicating quoted speech has remained unchanged for the past 275 or so

years.

References

Bittner, M. (2007). Online update: temporal, modal, and de se anaphora in polysynthetic

discourse. In C. Barker & P. Jacobson (Eds.) Direct Compositionality (pp. 363-404).

Oxford: Oxford UP.

Cappelen, H., & Lepore, E. (2007). Language turned on itself: the semantics and pragmatics of

metalinguistic discourse. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Clarke, A. (1837). The Holy Bible: containing the Old and New Testaments, the text carefully

printed from the most correct copies of the present authorized translation, including the

marginal readings and parallel texts. With a commentary and critical notes designed as

a help to a better understanding of the sacred writings. New York: T. Mason & G. Lane.

Cumming, S. (2003). Two accounts of indexicals in mixed quotation. The Belgian Journal of

Linguistics, 17, 77-88.

Davidson, D. (1979). Quotation. Theory and Decision, 11.1, 27-40.

29

Estil, L. (2014). Commonplace markers and quotation marks. ArchBook.

http://drc.usask.ca/projects/archbook/commonplace.php. Accessed 20 January 2015.

Finnegan, R. (2011). Why do we quote: the culture and history of quotation. Cambridge: Open

Book Publishers.

Houston, K. (2016). Shady characters: the secret life of punctuation, symbols & other

typographical marks. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Jaszczolt, K., & Huang, M. (2017). Monsters and I: the case of mixed quotation. In this volume.

Johnson, M. (2011). The punctuation theory of quotation. In E. Brendel, J. Meibauer, & M.

Steinbach (Eds.) Understanding quotation: linguistic and philosophical analyses (pp.

209-230). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Johnson, M., & Lepore, E. (2011). Misrepresenting misrepresentation. In E. Brendel, J.

Meibauer, & M. Steinbach (Eds.) Understanding quotation: linguistic and philosophical

analyses (pp. 231-248). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Kaplan, D. (1989). Demonstratives. In J. Almog, J. Perry, & H. Wettstein (Eds.) Themes from

Kaplan (pp. 481-564). Oxford: Oxford UP.

Lewis, D. (1969). Convention. Cambridge: Harvard UP.

Maier, E. (2017). The pragmatics of attraction. In this volume.

Recanati, F. (2001). Open quotation. Mind, 110, 637-687.

Saka, P. (2011). The act of quotation. In E. Brendel, J. Meibauer, & M. Steinbach (Eds.)

Understanding quotation: linguistic and philosophical analyses (pp. 303-332). Berlin:

Mouton de Gruyter.

Washington, C. (1992). The identity theory of quotation. Journal of Philosophy, 89, 582-605.

Wertheimer, R. (1999). Quotation apposition. The Philosophical Quarterly, 49, 514-519.

Wolfson, N. (1989). The conversational historical present. Linx, 20.1, 135-151.