To prevent any misunderstanding as to the limit of the quotation, doubled commas were inserted at the beginning of every line by many printers of the first half of the nineteenth century.[1] Nor is this fashion entirely obsolete; doubled commas at the beginning of lines are used occasionally in legal documents and in the columns of newspapers, but this style is out of fashion in good book-work. The long quotation or extract is specially indented or is shown in a smaller type, with equal clearness to the reader and with better effect in the print,[2] but when double quotes are clearly marked in copy, the compositor must insert them without question.
When an author objects to quote-marks at the beginning of every line of a long extract or document, but insists on its appearance in the type of the text, the distinction desired for this extract may be made by indenting all the lines one em on each side or by a deeper indention on the left.
SINGLE QUOTES
British printers sometimes use single instead of double quotes, but not with advantage to the print or help to the reader. The single quote-mark, a feeble sign at its best, and especially feeble when the tails of the characters are worn, should be reserved for the quote within a quote, as will be shown in following illustrations.
