Punctuation Period Inside Or Outside Quotes

Colons and semicolons are placed outside quotations while question marks and exclamation marks follow the logic of the sentence.

Punctuation period inside or outside quotes. For other punctuation marks where the closing punctuation goes depends on which idea it refers to the sentence or the quote. In the uk the tendency is to place them outside. With only one exception the period always comes inside closing quotation marks. This rule applies even if only one quoted word ends the sentence.

In british style spacing issues are less pronounced because it uses single quotation marks instead of double and commas and periods are placed outside the quotation marks. You ve got to be carefully taught wrote oscar hammerstein ii. In america we use a hard and fast rule that was supposedly designed by compositors to protect the tiny commas and periods 1 2. In british usage they can go either inside or outside.

In britain they use rules that require the writer to determine whether the period or comma belong with the quotation or are part of the larger sentence. The most common question people ask about quotation marks is whether periods and commas go inside or outside and the answer depends on where your audience lives because in american english we always put periods and commas inside quotation marks but in british english periods and commas can go inside or outside kind of like the american rules for question marks and exclamation points. For example if the sentence is a question but the words in the quote are not the question mark would go outside the quotation marks. The period is unique among punctuation marks in that yes it always goes inside the quotation marks.

If a sentence ends with quoted material the period is placed inside the closing quotation mark even if the period is not part of the original quotation. When multiple quotation marks are used for quotations within quotations keep the quotation marks together put periods and commas inside both. Put semi colons colons etc outside both. Example the president s speech both began and ended with the word freedom.

This is the opposite of what happens with a period or comma. For instance he said i m going to the mall however this is not the case for all end punctuation marks. When you use a colon semicolon parenthesis exclamation mark or question mark the american rules dictate that the punctuation should go outside of the quotes. In american usage commas and periods at the end of quotes always go inside the quotation marks.