Quotation marks worksheets for year 3 Quotation marks are also known as ‘speech marks’ or ‘inverted commas’. The new National Curriculum for English uses the term ‘inverted commas,’ but we are not keen on this term as the marks are not all inverted! However, speech marks are now introduced in Year 3 to punctuate direct speech and they are revisited in later years. Speech marks can, and do, get quite complicated and the rules are often bent. Look at any collection of books or newspapers and you will see some use the double quotation marks and some use single. For example, The Times, The Sun and The Guardian use double and The Mail and The Observer use single. Much of it has to with who is in charge of typography at the newspaper concerned and the look of the page, rather than for grammatical reasons. Others argue that double marks should be kept just for direct speech and single quotes for any other purpose. We have decided to start off with the double marks for direct speech as these are used in the Year 6 Grammar, punctuation and spelling test. Let’s look at an example: James bragged, “I am the best player in the school!” There are several rules you will need to remember when using quotation marks: a. it is usual to introduce the speech with a comma (bragged,) b. the speech marks are usually double commas, the first pair upside down, but you may well see them as a single comma in many newspapers and books. Stick to double to begin with (“…….”) c. the punctuation at the end of the speech goes inside the speech marks if it is related to the speech (school!”) We have a great new set of pages on speech marks, making it as easy as possible for children in Year 3 on to begin to use the correct format for direct speech. We have kept it simple by having the speech either at the start of the sentence or the end. (e.g. The boy shouted, “Help!” or “Help!” shouted the boy.) Plenty to get to grips with here, but keep an eye out for some more complex quotation marks worksheets later in the year. Go to our Punctuation worksheets