23 March 2014
American English and British English differ in a number of ways, including punctuation practices. Stark differences are seen in the handling of quotations.
- AmE places "double quote" marks around quotations, with 'single quotes' used for quotes within a quote.
- BrE reverses that practice. A basic quote has 'single quote' marks (aka, inverted commas), while an embedded quote has "double quote" marks.
Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.), which covers far more style issues than citation issues, offers a motherlode of guidelines for other punctuation matters in its chapter 6.