Quotes Inside Or Outside The Period

Jazz on january 12 2010 8 18 pm.

Quotes inside or outside the period. In american english periods and commas always go inside the closing quotation mark. Semicolons colons asterisks and dashes always go outside the closing quotation mark. The period is unique among punctuation marks in that yes it always goes inside the quotation marks. American english is known for its exceptions to rules and there is one type of incidence where it would not be the case that periods go inside quotation marks.

And question marks and exclamation points require that you analyze the sentence and make a decision based on context. The main problem that people have with using quotes is also a fundamental one. Colons and semicolons are placed outside quotations while question marks and exclamation marks follow the logic of the sentence. If the words did not end with a period because it was just part of a sentence then why would i put the period inside the quotation marks.

If you re using american english they go inside. In american writing commas and periods almost always go inside quotation marks. When a period goes inside the quotation marks it is set aside as being part of the section in the marks. If you place quotation marks around a letter or number usually the period or comma falls 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. If i m quoting winston churchill i d put his direct words in quotes. 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. For instance he said i m going to the mall however this is not the case for all end punctuation marks.

Does the period at the end of the quote go inside or outside of the quotation marks. 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. He said we need to tell the boss right away she reported that the boss was in her words miffed. For other punctuation marks where the closing punctuation goes depends on which idea it refers to the sentence or.

If one is quoting a complete sentence then the period should go inside the quote. It seems to me that common sense dictates. In the uk the tendency is to place them outside. Periods come inside with only one exception the period always comes inside closing quotation marks.

If only select words or partial phrases are quoted the period should be outside the quotes. This rule applies even if only one quoted word ends the sentence.