Quotes Go Inside Or Outside The Period

In american writing commas and periods almost always go inside quotation marks.

Quotes go inside or outside the period. In british usage they can go either inside or outside. Unfortunately the rules governing whether to place punctuation inside or outside quotation marks are not straightforward and they depend on whether you are following us or uk writing conventions. If you re using american english they go inside. Should punctuation go inside or outside quotation marks.

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. He is a summary of the more detailed table below. If one is quoting a complete sentence then the period should go inside the quote.

This rule applies even if only one quoted word ends the sentence. Luckily when it comes to periods and commas the answer to whether they go inside or outside the quotation mark is much simpler. 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. In british english we treat periods and commas the same way.

Periods come inside with only one exception the period always comes inside closing quotation marks. In american english question marks and exclamation marks are placed logically based on whether they belong to the quote or the sentence. If a period or comma belongs to the quote you put it inside of the quotation marks. In american usage commas and periods at the end of quotes always go inside the quotation marks.

American style guides such as associated press ap modern language association mla and the chicago manual of style chicago all follow the american rule when it comes to commas and periods. 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. You ve got to be carefully taught wrote oscar hammerstein ii. It seems to me that common sense dictates.

He said we need to tell the boss right away she reported that the boss was in her words miffed. The period is unique among punctuation marks in that yes it always goes inside the quotation marks. If only select words or partial phrases are quoted the period should be outside the quotes. 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.