In English writing, quotation marks or inverted commas, also known informally as quotes, talking marks, speech marks, quote marks, quotemarks or speechmarks, are punctuation marks placed on either side of a word or phrase in order to identify it as a quotation, direct speech or a literal title or name. Quotation marks may be used to indicate that the meaning of the word or phrase they surround should be taken to be different from (or, at least, a modification of) that typically associated with it, and are often used in this way to express irony. (For example, in the sentence 'The lunch lady plopped a glob of "food" onto my tray.' the quotation marks around the word food show it is being called that ironically.) They also sometimes appear to be used as a means of adding emphasis, although t