One common mistake that people make with quotation marks is to either forget to include them when necessary or to place them incorrectly. Quotation marks should always be used to enclose direct quotations or to indicate the titles of shorter works. Omitting these marks can lead to confusion and misinterpretation of the text.

One common mistake is using quotation marks when the writer gives you the basic idea of what someone else said, but not in that person's exact words. We call this using an indirect quote. Indirect quotes don't get quotation marks, as you can see in our examples here: Direct quote: "What are you looking at?" Julie demanded.

Common mistakes when using quotation marks Incorrectly using commas before and within quotations, quotation marks in combination with exclamation and question marks