Here we have a perfect storm of mistakes involving the use of quotation marks. This writer must have taken a page out of Grammarly.com’s playbook, since Grammarly claims that it doesn’t matter whether you use single or double quotes, but, of course, this being The Huffington Post, there’s even an added twist: a mistake in a mistake, if you will.
Take a look:
CNN host Anderson Cooper pointed out Wednesday night the ridiculousness of Donald Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich accusing Megyn Kelly of being “fascinated with sex”.
Here, Anderson Cooper is directly quoting Newt Gingrich. In other words, “fascinated with sex” are Gingrich’s words, not Cooper’s. There are four different people mentioned in this one sentence. In order for readers to understand who said what, we have to give proper attribution, which we do with the double-single/single-double quotation mark rule.
Mistake #1: the quotes themselves.
Rule: In American English, when person #1 directly quotes person #2, you use double quotes around person #1’s words and single quotes around what’s being quoted (person #2’s words), like so:
CNN host Anderson Cooper pointed out Wednesday night the ridiculousness of Donald Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich accusing Megyn Kelly of being “‘fascinated with sex’”.
Mistake #2: placement of the end quotes.
Rule: In American English, all quotes are placed OUTSIDE periods and commas. There are no exceptions.
This quote, correctly expressed, should look like this:
CNN host Anderson Cooper pointed out Wednesday night the ridiculousness of Donald Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich accusing Megyn Kelly of being “‘fascinated with sex.’”
This way we know exactly who said what.
Truth: Never look to The Huffington Post as an authority about American English. Grammarly.com, either. Or Wikipedia.com (its writers really are clueless!).
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