Quotation Marks: Make Sure They Open and Close

Here’s a proofreading tip for you.

If you’re working with text that has dialogue (or really any quotation marks), make sure each opening quotation mark has an accompanying closing quotation mark, and vice versa. Each time you encounter an opening quotation mark, remind your brain to check for a closing quotation mark as well, even if you have to jump ahead before reading on. This is easy when reading short lines of dialogue, but it’s common to get lost or forget as paragraphs become longer and have a lot of other punctuation.

Also, Microsoft Word isn’t very good at recognizing a missing quotation mark. Just another reason why a professional editor is valuable =)

Timothy