When writting a composition, we sometimes have to quote speeches（引用话语）.To write correct quoted speech, two things should be paid attention to: punctuation and capitalization（标点与大小写）.

    As to the capitalization, I will write tomorrow. First, let’s deal with the puncuation.

    To quote  speech, we use quotation marks（引号）. Here are the basic uses: 

• Qutation marks are used for titles of articles, short stories, short poems, songs, etc.（引用文章标题，小故事标题，短诗标题，歌名）:

     The People’s Daily carries an important article today: “The President Situation in the Balkans.”

• Double quotation marks（双引号） are used to enclose direct quotations either in dialogue or from a book; single quotation marks（单引号） are used to enclose a quotation within a quotation, which is similar to that in our Chinese writing（双引号里用单引号）:

    "Shall I turn off the radio?" he asked his mother.

    "What do you mean by ‘evolutionary mechanism’?" one of the students asked.

• The period and the comma are placed within the quotation marks（逗号句号放在引号内）:

   “John,” she said, “I’ve lost gloves.”

• The colon and the semicolon are placed outside the quotation marks（引号与分号用在引号外）:

     First he talked about “New Criticism”; then he discussed “postmodernism.”

    The dictionary gives a brief explanation of “postmodernism”:  a style of building, decoration, art, etc., which uses an unusual mixing of old and new forms.

• The dash, the question mark, and the exclamation mark are placed within the quotation marks when they are connected only with the quoted words; they are placed outside when they are connected with the whole sentences（破折号，问号，感叹号，当它们与引用的句子联系，放在引号内；当它们与整句句子联系，放在引号外）：

     She asked, “What does modernism mean?”

    What is the meaning of “New Criticism”?

“Help! Help!” she cried.

 Stop crying “I want it”!

• When two or more persons are talking together, each person's speech, however short it is, is written as a separated paragraph（有两人以上对话时，每个人的话应作为独立的段落）.

     "Did you go to the zoo yesterday?" she asked her son, smiling.

    "Yes, I did," he said. "I had a good time there."

    "I'm sure you saw the pandas."

    "Of course. But there was such a crowd," he said with a sigh.