When should you use single quotes and when should you used double quotes?

A straightforward question with a not so straightforward answer.

The first answer is that it depends on where your readers are, and the second answer is that it actually doesn’t matter where your readers are. In the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, convention tends toward double quotes.

In this quote from The Razor’s Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham, the reader is confronted with the narrator’s musing about his characters at the end of the story: “I am of the earth, earthy; I can only admire the radiance of such a rare creature, I cannot step into his shoes and enter into his innermost heart as I sometimes think I can do with a person more nearly allied to the common run of man.”

In the United Kingdom and South Africa, convention tends toward the single quote, but even here double quotes are not uncommon.

And earlier in The Razor’s Edge, ‘He is without ambition and he has no desire for fame; to become anything of a public figure would be deeply distasteful to him; and so it may be that he is satisfied to lead his chosen life and be no more than himself.’

Ultimately, your preference can outweigh any regional convention. But whatever your decision, don’t mix—remain consistent with quotation marks throughout the piece.

But sometimes, you need them both. Both single and double quotes are necessary when quoting a text that contains direct speech or when there is speech within speech.

Original text:

She came to the door to see me out and kissed me on both cheeks.

‘We’ve had some good times together. Keep a good recollection of me.’

Quoted text:

“She came to the door to see me out and kissed me on both cheeks.

“‘We’ve had some good times together. Keep a good recollection of me.’”

Remember that quotes are used to indicate a special use of a word or to indicate irony or to tell the reader that you are talking about the word not using it. In these situations, a single or double quotation mark can be used. (If you missed the earlier articles, click here to learn about punctuating quotes and click here to learn about when to use quotes.)

Special Use (the original text without quotation marks):
That which will be shrunk
Must first be stretched.
That which will be weakened
Must first be strengthened.
That which will be torn down
Must first be raised up.
That which will be taken
Must first be given.
This is called “subtle illumination.”

– Lao Tzu, “36” Tao Te Ching

Irony:
“What a ‘deep’ voice you have,” said Little Snarky Red Riding Hood.
“What do you mean? Are you saying I have a squeaky voice? Take that back! Why are you so mean to me?” cried the mealy wolf.

Talking about the word—not using it:

The word “penumbra” can be used figuratively to great effect.

As a recommendation, use the quotation mark that you are not using for your citations or direct speech. So if you use double quotes for citations, use single quotes for the special use of a word. And if you use single quotes for citations, use the double quotes for a special use of a word. In this way, you can further signify your intent as well as delineate the different ways that quotation marks are used. This, however, is merely a suggestion and something you won’t likely find in a style manual.

I am not old. Granted, I didn’t get my first cell phone until I was in college. And yes, the first music I ever bought was on cassette tape. And sure, Google didn’t exist when I was born, but still. I am not being old. So why didn’t my teachers cover prime factorization when I was in school?

It’s not like the concept of prime factors is anything new. I would give you some historical evidence of this, but this newfangled Google thing gives me some trouble sometimes. But still, why wasn’t prime factorization more prevalent in schools when I was growing up?

For those of you as old as I am (or at least as disadvantaged as I was in not getting this information in school) prime factorization says that we can break any number down to smaller pieces—it’s prime bits—and make it easier to handle. We do that by first taking any factor pair and then seeing whether the factors are prime, or whether they are non-prime, in which case we repeat the process until we have all primes. Take the following example:

Our analysis shows us that 84=2*2*3*7. This in itself seems pretty simple, but making things simple is often the major step that you need to take in order to solve what looks like a complex problem. Take the following for example:

 is a factor of 540. What is the greatest possible value of x+y?

Although the form makes this look daunting, it’s simply an exercise in prime factoring. Watch what happens when we re-write the information in that form:

So, 540= 2*2*3*3*3*5. All that’s left to do is re-write that in a form that more closely resembles the form in which the problem was given.

Once the number has been broken into its prime factors, it’s plain to see that we can only squeeze two twos and three threes out of this number. There’s no different way we could break it down to get more twos or threes. Prime factoring figures out how many pieces of each type we have and allows us to re-assemble them in any way we see fit. So the greatest possible x is 2 and the greatest possible y is 3. Thus, 2+3 is equal to our answer of five.

Whether you’re old or young or somewhere in between, jump on board with prime factorization because taking numbers and breaking them into their component prime parts is a great way to solve problems and a recurring pattern on your test that you’ll be sure to recognize if you look for it!

I recently read an article in The New York Times, “Sometimes We Want Prices to Fool Us,” about how J.C. Penny’s ex-CEO Ron Johnson who tried to simplify pricing and improve business at the stores. It made it worse, though. But the failure might have been due to human psychology, not a management style.

Johnson wanted to always keep prices low and eliminate coupons and mailings. But profits fell over the course of 17 months and Johnson was let go. But that is not why I wanted to share this with all of you preparing for a test. The article brought up and interesting point about consumers and the idea of “anchoring.”

The importance of anchoring for consumers seems to parallel the importance of predicting for test takers. Here is an excerpt:

“Just having a generically fair or low price, as Penney did, said Alexander Chernev, a marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, assumes that consumers have some context for how much items should cost. But they don’t.

“‘J. C. Penney might say it’s a fair price, but why should consumers trust J. C. Penney?’ he asked. ‘At the end of the day, people don’t want a fair price. They want a great deal.’

“Consumers infer that they get a great deal based on the reference point provided by the higher, presale price. Social scientists refer to this idea as anchoring, and it applies to all sorts of consumer behavior and expectations. Without that anchor, consumers have trouble determining whether the store is actually giving them a good price.”

This passage could easily apply to you, the test taker. With a couple changes, this is justification and evidence for predicting—a crucial and necessary way to identify wrong answers and increase your chances on each question:

“Just having answer choices, as standardized tests do, assumes that test takers have some context for knowing how correct an answer is. But they don’t.

“‘Test makers might say it’s a fair choice of answers, but why would test takers trust test makers?’

“Test takers infer that they have a great answer choice based on the reference point provide by their prediction. Social scientists refer to this idea as predicting, and it applies to all sorts of test taking behavior and expectations. Without that prediction, test takers have trouble determining whether the test is actually giving them a good answer choice.”

The key here is establishing a point of reference for each question. You need to establish the context for the question and infer what the answer will “smell” like and “taste” like, that is, deciding what kind of words will be in the answer choice: Will the words be positive or negative? Or should they be neutral? Should it be information found directly in the passage or in the sentence? Or is it information that should be supported by some idea? How big is the number going to find? Is it a positive or negative number?

These types of questions establish a foundation that you anchor to when wading into the answer choices. Without being tethered to something firm, you will easily be swept away by attractive wrong answer traps. And trust me. They will be attractive. The test makers are really good at making them attractive.

So, before you look at the answer choices, take a moment to predict what the answer will look like and smell like. Then you are ready to eliminate wrong answers and find the one correct answer.

Today we’re looking at the form of the answer choices. It’s a frustrating experience to feel that you’ve done every step correctly in a math problem and to reach the end only to realize that your choice isn’t there. Self-doubt can quickly creep in leading to thoughts of “Where did I mess up?”, “Do I need to start over?” or “Whyyyyy is this test sooo harrrrrrrd?”

Avoid the whininess of that last question and realize that having the value you reached at the end of your work not line up with the values in the answer choices is a common experience, and it doesn’t mean that you did anything wrong. Often by slightly transforming the answer choices the testmaker can take a simple question and make it one capable of separating the unprepared student and the test-taking superstar (that’s about to be you!).

Here are three common transformations that you’re likely to see.

1. The answer is a combination of variables- Perhaps there’s a fact pattern that’s set up to have you solve for x. After going through all the math you’re confident that you’ve correctly solved for x, but you don’t see the value that you got. Double check to make sure that the question doesn’t ask for some form of x, such as 2x or x+y. It’s hard to get the right answer when you’re answering the wrong question!

2. The answer is a reduced fraction- This is perhaps the simplest one on the list, but the correct answer to the problem will be the fraction reduced to it’s simplest form. If your answer is 18/51 and you don’t see that in the choices, don’t worry. The testmaker’s version—6/17—is likely just a reduced form of the fraction that you didn’t initially see.

3. Your answer has a radical at the bottom of a fraction- For some reason many students fail to see that the following is true:

If you’re left with a square root in the denominator of a fraction, simply multiply both the top and bottom of your fraction by the same square root in order to simplify. Remember, that by the definition of a square root when you have this:

You can re-write it as:

And cancelling will leave you with:

For example:

Keep these examples in mind as you practice and you’ll realize that some of those times when you start to worry that you’ve gotten the wrong answer are just situations where you haven’t recognized your correct answer in another form!