Should Period Be Inside Or Outside Quotes

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

Should period be inside or outside quotes. He said we need to tell the boss right away she reported that the boss was in her words miffed. It seems to me that common sense dictates. If you place quotation marks around a letter or number usually the period or comma falls outside the 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.

When a period goes inside the quotation marks it is set aside as being part of the section in the marks. 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. Periods come inside with only one exception the period always comes inside closing quotation marks. If one is quoting a complete sentence then the period should go inside the quote.

For other punctuation marks where the closing punctuation goes depends on which idea it refers to the sentence or the quote. Simply put just ask yourself is the period for the quote or for the main sentence. You ve got to be carefully taught wrote oscar hammerstein ii. 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.

If i m quoting winston churchill i d put his direct words in quotes. If you re using american english they go inside. Colons and semicolons are placed outside quotations while question marks and exclamation marks follow the logic of the sentence. In the uk the tendency is to place them outside.

If only select words or partial phrases are quoted the period should be outside the quotes. For instance he said i m going to the mall however this is not the case for all end punctuation marks. This rule applies even if only one quoted word ends the sentence. When something is set in quotation marks it is separated.

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. However if the quote is a phrase then the period should be outside the quotation mark. Luckily when it comes to periods and commas the answer to whether they go inside or outside the quotation mark is much simpler. The period is unique among punctuation marks in that yes it always goes 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. It is an entity by itself though it is incorporated with the rest of the sentence and the sentences around it. This should help guide you.