Quotations Inside Or Outside The Period

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

Quotations inside or outside the period. This however is not true for other punctuation marks long answer. This page has examples showing the different conventions for placing punctuation inside or outside quotation marks. Now keep in mind that this comma and period inside the quotation marks business is strictly american usage. In most other incidences though you ll find periods go inside and so do commas.

The rule is the same for a list of titles. Luckily when it comes to periods and commas the answer to whether they go inside or outside the quotation mark is much simpler. The mla handbook notes by convention commas and periods that directly follow quotations go inside the closing quotation marks 88. Does the period at the end of the quote go inside or outside of the.

This rule applies even if only one quoted word ends the sentence. Do i put the period inside or outside the quotation marks. You ve got to be carefully taught wrote oscar hammerstein ii. In the uk the tendency is to place them outside.

However i have the always put a period inside the quotes statement burned into my head from my old english high school teacher. They are inclined to place commas and periods logically rather than conventionally depending on whether the punctuation belongs to the quotation or to the sentence that contains the quotation just as we do with question marks and exclamation points. One of the most common question people ask me is whether periods and commas go inside or outside a closing quotation mark and there s a reason everyone is confused. Today as promised we ll talk about how to mix quotation marks with other punctuation.

Note the commas though they probably are not part of the original quote. In british english these would fall outside the quotes. Even if you re quoting a couple of words from a text commas without being part of the text are included in the quotes. Quotation marks with commas and periods.

The main problem that people have with using quotes is also a fundamental one. Does the period go inside the quote or outside. Periods come inside with only one exception the period always comes inside closing quotation marks. Julio cortázar wrote many short stories including la noche boca arriba.

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. He said we need to tell the boss right away she reported that the boss was in her words miffed. The british don t do it that way. If you re using american english they go inside.

Thus in the following sentence the comma is placed after taught. I ve seen it in professional publications done both ways leading me to think that both are correct.