quotation mark

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Either of a pair of punctuation marks used primarily to mark the beginning and end of a passage attributed to another and repeated word for word, but also to indicate meanings or glosses and to indicate the unusual or dubious status of a word. They appear in the form of double quotation marks (“ ”) and single quotation marks (‘ ’). Single quotation marks are usually reserved for setting off a quotation within another quotation.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun UK One of a pair of quotation marks used to denote a quotation in writing. The symbol used at the beginning of the quotation ("opening quotation mark") is usually “ ("open inverted commas") or ‘ ("open inverted comma"), and the symbol at the end ("closing quotation mark") is ” ("close inverted commas") or ’ ("close inverted comma").
• noun North America One of a pair of quotation marks used to denote a quotation in writing. The same symbol is now typically used at both the beginning and the end of the quotation, which is usually the "double quotes" or "straight quotes" symbol ", although the "single quote" or "straight quote" symbol ' is sometimes used, especially to denote a quotation within a quotation.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun a punctuation mark used to attribute the enclosed text to someone else