Quotation marks around single words can occasionally be used for emphasis, but only when quoting a word or term someone else used. ... If a word needs to be emphasized but is not being quoted, you should avoid putting the word in quotes and use italics instead.

Do you quote definitions?

Explicit definitions of words or terms are put in quotation marks. Such definitions may or may not be direct quotations from a dictionary or similar source. Definitions that follow such expressions as means, defines, or is defined as are normally put in quotation marks. This highlights or emphasizes the definition.

What is it called when you quote a phrase?

A quotation is the repetition of a sentence, phrase, or passage from speech or text that someone has said or written. In oral speech, it is the representation of an utterance (i.e. of something that a speaker actually said) that is introduced by a quotative marker, such as a verb of saying.