Is the use of single quotation marks below standard style in American English?
The Japanese word “Nagasaki” is pronounced as ‘na+ga+sa+ki’
Double quotation marks would seem more natural to me, but I found the two style guide points below. However, the info in the single quotation marks is a pronunciation guide, not a definition or translation.
Use single quotation marks for definitions or translations that
appear without intervening punctuation (e.g., ainsi ‘thus’).7.52 Parentheses and quotation marks. A translation following a foreign word, phrase or title is enclosed in parentheses or quotation
marks. …In linguistics and phonetic studies a definition is often
enclosed in single quotation marks with no intervening punctuation;
any following punctuation is placed after the closing quotation mark.
(Chicago Manual of Style, 15th. ed.)
Best Answer
Here is the longer version of the MLA style advice cited in your first quotation:
Crucially, and unlike in your rendition of the final sentence of this advice, the word ainsi is italicized in the MLA guidance. I take this advice as endorsing the following punctuation (if your original wording had been as given below):
The justification for the single quotation marks at na+ga+sa+ki is that it appears contiguously to the word Nagasaki, as if it were a consecutive translation. That is a special case for which MLA has carved out the italics 'slanted typeface' exception to the normal rule that words used as words should either be set in double quotation marks (in most academic settings) or in italics (in linguistics studies).
The Chicago Manual of Style, sixteenth edition (2010) does not fully agree with MLA on the specific issue of punctuating a foreign word that is immediately followed by a translation, although it does accept the MLA's view of how to handle such juxtapositions in the specific fields of linguistic and phonetic studies:
Applied to my revision of your original example, Chicago's advice would support any of the following three forms of punctuation:
or
or
Again, however, a prerequisite for this advice is the unmediated juxtaposition of the term of interest (in italics) with its definition or, arguably, phonetic expression (in parentheses, double quotation marks, or single quotation marks).
The example you ask about does not satisfy this prerequisite, so the MLA and Chicago guidance. That being the case, I would conclude that the appropriate MLA style, by default, would be to use double quotation marks for the trailing phonetic equivalent:
in most academic settings, and
in linguistics studies. Chicago refers italics to quotation marks, so its preferred handling of your original example would probably be this: