In VBScript, string literals are surrounded by double quotes ("). This is what your first example shows:
Msgbox "This is myName" ' This works fine
However, if you want to include a double quote character inside of your string literal, you’ve got a problem, because VBScript is going to interpret the second double quote character it finds as signifying the end of the string literal. This is what your second example shows:
Msgbox "This is "myName"" ' This gives an error
^ ' because it prematurely terminates the string here
' and doesn't know what to do with the trailing "
Fortunately, there’s an escape hatch. It involves escaping the double quote character with another character, indicating that VBScript should process it as a literal double quote character, rather than a magical “end-of-string-literal” character. It just so happens that the escape character VBScript uses is a double quote character. This is what your second example shows:
Msgbox "This is ""myName""" 'This works fine
- You begin the string with a single double-quote, indicating the start of a string literal.
- Then you want to have an embedded double quote character, so you use two of them. This is where the escaping starts: you escape the double quote character with another double quote character.
- Then you do that escaping thing again.
- Finally, you terminate the entire string literal with another double quote character.
Other languages often use a backslash (\) as the escape character. That might make things easier to see. Assuming VBScript used a backslash as the escape character rather than a double quote, your code would look like this:
Msgbox "This is \"myName\"" ' doesn't work in VBScript; example only
If this syntax bothers you, you can declare a constant for the double quote and use that each time:
Const Quote = """"
' ... later in the code ...
Msgbox "This is " & Quote & "myName" & Quote