Quick question for English Teachers

[elfycat]

(For starters tell me not to take my MA and take a PGCE to become one of you. I was a nurse for years and sick of being in a government policy led career).

At GCSE and A level do children use single or double quotation marks around character speech? Obviously the publishing conventions are single, I've been teaching my children single, the books they read have single, but I think primary school might be teaching double marks around speech ( how quaint & old fashioned or American ). They've been encouraged to write fiction from when they could first make coherent letter shapes so single marks are fairly ingrained by 10 years old.

If they will need to do double I'll bite my tongue ( possibly literally ) and encourage that (and rant in a quiet dark room by myself)). If they use single I'll ask her class teacher to bear with her use of them.

I’m a high-school teacher and ex-editor and my steer is that it doesn’t matter, but whatever you use, stick to it so that you are consistently using the same.

Agree that yr7s come up with 66 and 99s, so I guess they teach double at primary. I honestly don’t think it matters and have never had a conversation about this in my dept

Thanks TheBitchOf I'll let DD2 know that the 'red pen' marks correcting her are just the teacher having to follow their conventions and her (our) way is not incorrect, and might not matter in the long run.

She's already corrected it back to UK industry standard anyway.

If anyone does comment further on this thread and it has mattered at some point after Y5 I'll reconsider telling her to go with what her teacher wants. No point in getting her into a bad habit unnecessarily.

I have never heard anyone ask this but fwiw (not much probably) I have worked for many years in printed publications and we have always used double quotes (unless it's a quote within a quote - He said: "She claims she 'will be there' but I know different," type deal).

So it's interesting that you say that about publishing; I presume you mean books not newspapers and magazines.

I mark GCSEs and have moderated A level English. It matters not one iota.

I teach two for speech and one for quotation - more for clarity than anything else.