Put Period Inside Or Outside Of Quotes

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.

Put period inside or outside of quotes. It seems to me that common sense dictates. For other punctuation marks where the closing punctuation goes depends on which idea it refers to the sentence or the quote. Luckily when it comes to periods and commas the answer to whether they go inside or outside the quotation mark is much simpler. In american writing commas and periods almost always go inside quotation marks.

Answer by daniellek 535 for mla style format a period is left off inside the quote and placed at the end of the entire sentence or citation. Periods come inside with only one exception the period always comes inside closing quotation marks. In the uk the tendency is to place them outside. Colons and semicolons are placed outside quotations while question marks and exclamation marks follow the logic of the sentence.

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 biggest problem with your example is that single quotes are used only for a quotation within a quotation. He said we need to tell the boss right away she reported that the boss was in her words miffed. I depends on what style guide you use but i think most respected style guides put the period inside the quotation marks.

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. That s always true whether the quotation appears at the beginning of the sentence in the middle of the sentence or at the very end. This rule applies even if only one quoted word ends the sentence. I know a lot of brits would disagree with that as they tend to use single quotes.

If one is quoting a complete sentence then the period should go inside the quote. The exception to this rule is when mutiple sentences are placed within the qoutations in which you punctuate the sentence normally until the last sentence and then leave that period mark off. Jazz on january 12 2010 8 18 pm. For instance he said i m going to the mall however this is not the case for all end punctuation marks.

Some are included within the quotation marks if it makes sense and other are outside of it. In the us periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks. The standard rule in american punctuation is that periods go inside quotation marks as do most commas even if the punctuation is not part of the quote. The period is unique among punctuation marks in that yes it always goes inside the quotation marks.