What do you call these things... 'xxx'?

Question

the bits outside the xxx

Answer 1

Inverted commas or single quotation marks. Either term is correct.

Answer 2

Quotation marks, also called quotes, speech marks or inverted commas, are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, a phrase or a word. The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the same character.

Punctuation Mark :

The apostrophe ( ’ ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages written in the Latin alphabet. In English, it has two main functions: it marks omissions; and it assists in marking the possessives of all nouns and many pronouns. (In strictly limited cases, it is sometimes also allowed to assist in marking plurals, but most authorities are now against such usage; see below.) According to the OED, the word comes ultimately from Greek ἡ ἀπόστροφος [προσῳδία] (hē apóstrophos [prosōidía], the [accent of] “turning away”, or elision), through Latin and French.[1]

Answer 3

A single one of the characters you refer to is an apostrophe. This occurs in possessive expressions such as "John's hand" or to indicate a letter omitted as in "Won't you be coming tonight?".

When used as a pair, they are inverted commas or quotation marks:
I said, 'We need to be there in good time.'
When printed, the opening quotation mark is inverted, but the close quotation mark is not.
Quotation marks may be either single, as in your 'xxx', or double, as in "xxx".

Answer 4

Apostrophes

Answer 5

inverted commas.. that's what I was taught at school, but looking at them now, they're not really inverted, just raised a bit higher! The way they used to be written was one way up at the start, and the other way up at the end, can't remember which way round. How sad is this!??

The apostrophe has three uses: 1) to form possessives of nouns, 2) to show the omission of letters, and 3) to indicate plurals of letters, ...

Answer 6

16

Answer 7

Inverted comas
Parenthesis are these (xxx)
I think apostrophe is just '
eg: Mary's book

Answer 8

Quotation marks, they are used to identify the words in between as direct speech

Answer 9

The key you are using is the apostrophe key but when used in this manner they are called single quotes. This is to differentiate them from "double quotes".

In English they are often used to keep track of a written conversation:

"What?"
'I said they are used to keep track of a written conversation'
"Ah! Like you're doing now then?"
'Exactly'.

Answer 10

Quotation marks?