I noticed that as well. At first it confused me, but then I let it go. One thing I noticed in the appendixes... if you read the foot notes at the bottom, Tolkien writes things such as, "I believe that Bilbo was referring to..." - almost as if he is writing onto paper what Bilbo once wrote - it would make sense to use single quotes if he was quoting someone else's work to begin with. It's just a theory, but who knows. He always talks about Bilbo writing these stories, maybe he wanted it to appear that way.
Any thoughts or opinions on this far-fetched theory?
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