Omitting quotation mark.

Question

When I am reading Anderson's fairy tale, the flying trunk.
I found that the following sentense doesn't have both double quotation mark.

"'Now you are talking too fast,' spluttered the fire.

so I thought that it was mistyping. But it's not.
Plz tell me why sentence is right.

MrPedantic · Accepted Answer

Hello Doumiar

I think this extract comes from the young merchant's tale within
The Flying Trunk.

In your text, the young merchant's tale itself appears to be enclosed
in double quotation marks. Speech within the young merchant's tale
('Now you are talking too fast' etc.) is enclosed in single quotation
marks.

Once upon a time, typesetters would begin each line of a paragraph of
speech with a fresh quotation mark, e.g.

'The gentleman,' said he, 'is trying to act a part, for
'which he is by no means qualified: if he had all
'the inclination in the world, it is not in his power
'to be mad.'

Under this convention, if the speech runs over several paragraphs, there
is no closing quotation mark at the end of each paragraph, unless it's
the final one.

It seems that this convention applies in your copy of the text! If it's an
electronic copy, the quotation marks were probably copied faithfully
from the original.

MrP

Doumiar · Answer

Wow.. I got it thanks

Omitting quotation mark.

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