But then we have to ask — why two ‘ marks, to make the quotation mark? A quotidian reason: when you only use one, it’s an apostrophe. We already had the mark that goes in “don’t”, in “I’m”, in “Maxwell’s”; so two ’ were used to distinguish the quote mark from the existing apostrophe.
Incidentally I think in British English people normally do just use single quotes. I checked the first book I could find that was printed in the UK and that’s what it uses:
Incidentally I think in British English people normally do just use single quotes. I checked the first book I could find that was printed in the UK and that’s what it uses:
I like this better!