I've got a horrible feeling that I might have written my novel using the incorrect speech marks. Thought I'd check up to see which is the right way to do it before I go about submitting.

Usually when I write a passage and a character speaks, I use these speech marks:

"What a lovely day it is".

However, I've noticed that in most of the novels I've read in the last few days, they use the single speech marks. Like so..

'What a lovely day it is'.

So do I need to go back and correct this in my novel? Replacing all the " with ' I mean? I'm wondering if that could be a factor as to why I haven't been accepted in the past by agents, etc. Or am I worrying about nothing?

UK standard is single speech marks, US is double (which you also see in older-printed UK books), so it depends what you've been reading, which you'll see. It's not a deal-breaker either way, though they may notice. It's not hard, though slightly boring, to do a search-and-destroy to change it.

What you might want to check is that UK practice is to the final full stop should go inside the closing inverted comma.

He hung up his coat. 'Please put that down.'

He hung up his coat and said, 'Please put that down.'

If in doubt, get hold of New Hart's Rules, and do what it tells you...

Emma

Thanks for that Emma. Much appreciated. I supposed I could always do two versions of the novel. One for US and another for UK. It will be a real ball ache to change everything like that, but it will probably be worth it in the long run.

TBH, I wouldn't bother to have a different version to have the UK version won't make US agents turn you down. In theory (can't say I've done it for years), to change the opening quote you only have to search for space+" and change it to space+', and do the same with the space after the " and the ' for the closing one. It's easier going from double to single, because you don't find you've converted all the apostrophes by mistake. It's much more important to get punctuation right, because that they do notice.

Emma

That's true. I'll just leave it and concentrate on the punctuation of it.

ANother thing I've noticed in a lot of books (british ones of course) is that they seem to do the opening line of each new chapter in capital letters. Example:


JOE REALISED HE had no money to pay for the pint of Fosters he just ordered.


Is there any reason at all that books do that? I understand they need to establish a new scene and all, but is there a reason they do it that way? Should I be doing my writing like this?

No, it's just part of the design of the printed book.

You're really not trying to make your MSS look like a printed book - don't forget not long since we were all doing this on typewriters, which look nothing like that. All an agent wants is something clear, and plain, set out in the standard way, and conforming to the rules of punctuation etc. so that a) they can read it without wonky punctuation etc. making things incoherent and b) they can tell that you know the rules or have bothered to learn and get them right, because no one's got time to do that for you...

Emma

search-and-destroy

Yegads! Glad I've not found that one.

Otherwise known as find-and-replace!

Search and destroy would be a pretty good thing for editing stuff. Maybe they could invent a program where you search our words and actually SEE them getting destroyed--like being shot, or blown up or (my personal favourite) a chainsaw! Might be quite funny--then again, maybe I just have some serious issues. lol

I presume you've seen this?

http://www.netdisaster.com/

I didn't until now. Man that looks fun!

It doesn't matter whether you use single or double speech marks throughout, just be consistent. When your manuscript is copyedited the copyeditor will give an instruction to the typesetter to use single or double speechmarks according to the publisher's house style. (Wish I'd known this before submitting, as I did exactly the same and changed all my doubles to singles!)

Have to say I always have used double speech marks ( with single inside if quoting within speech) My English is from the school/"O" level system, and was still fine for my MA a few years ago. Anyway, I had a look at my pile of "to read" books and here are the results:

"The Sea of Trolls" by Nancy Farmer. Published by Simon & Schuster UK, 2004 uses double speech marks

"Totally Unsuitable for Children" by Simon Cheshire. Published by Walker Books, London, 2000 uses double speech marks.

"Freedom Flight" by Bernard Ashley. Published by Orchard Books, London, 2003 uses single speech marks.

"Mister Monday" by Garth Nix. Published by Harper Collins, UK, 2004 (first published by Scholastic US 2003) uses double speech marks.

So in mho it is too complicated for words, and I will stick with what is my usual style, and leave to the house style guru should I ever be successful with publication. It is just as easy to be "wrong" as "right" over this.



<Added>

PS Just checked the children's group, nine pieces uploaded with speech in them, and 3 of us are using singles, 6 of us are using doubles - and I never even noticed on reading - so am not convinced that there are any hard or fast rules here.