Something I actually saw in print, that took a moment to decipher--"blah blah quote blah blah and quote". I don't remember the author's name, or the name of the publication. What the author should have typed was--"blah blah". Nothing more. The writer must have taken this from an audio source, such as might be used by a reporter phoning in a story, or dictating a story into a recorder for later transcription In order to let the person hearing the tape ( or call ) know which words were a quotation ( the words of someone other than the author ), the speaker said "quote" to denote the beginning of the quotation, and "end quote" to denote the end of the quotation. Quotation marks are always used in pairs--one set at the beginning, one at the end. By placing words in quotation marks, the author indicates that the words were said, or written, by someone else. The words within the quotation marks should be faithfully rendered, and their source identified.
Example--Marie Antoinette supposedly said "let them eat cake", when told that the peasants had no bread.
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