Single quotes is standard UK editorial style for dialogue. It's not a hard rule, but it's pretty consistently applied. Double quotes is typically for US published books.
Why? No idea.
Because we're Americans, and that's just how we roll.
Plus we call this thing ' an apostrophe and use it to join letters to other words.
We call these " quotation marks, and since one usually quotes what someone else says...
I'm not going to dispute what Drew says, but I do find it odd that I (as British as a stick of Blackpool rock) was taught exactly as Indigo puts it. Is it a quirk that my schooling matched the American style, or merely a peculiarity of British editors/publishers compared to British teachers?
(And whilst I fully admit to needing the services of a good editor to bash my largely unpublished - and unpublish
able - hoard of fiction into shape, I doubt I'll change the way I've been writing since I was a scabby-knee'd scribbler. It would be a lot of effort to reverse the ingrained habits of a lifetime!)
Good luck to all and sundry, though. I may just have a crack, too, as ED and the community have inspired me...
o7
