Should Period Go Inside Or Outside Quotes

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

Should period go inside or outside quotes. If you place quotation marks around a letter or number usually the period or comma falls outside the quotes. If i m quoting winston churchill i d put his direct words in quotes. For other punctuation marks where the closing punctuation goes depends on which idea it refers to the sentence or the quote. Periods come inside with only one exception the period always comes inside closing quotation marks.

This rule applies even if only one quoted word ends the sentence. If you re writing in england or in another country that uses british writing conventions you ll want to place periods and commas outside quotation marks. If the quotation is a sentence then the period should be inside the quotation marks. Simply put just ask yourself is the period for the quote or for the main sentence.

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. In american writing commas and periods almost always go inside quotation marks. It is an entity by itself though it is incorporated with the rest of the sentence and the sentences around it. 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. When a period goes inside the quotation marks it is set aside as being part of the section in the marks. Even more confusing periods and commas always always always go inside quotation marks unless doing so would confuse the reader such as in a procedure when telling users what to type but exclamation points question marks and semicolons go outside. In the uk the tendency is to place them outside.

The period is unique among punctuation marks in that yes it always goes inside the quotation marks. For instance he said i m going to the mall however this is not the case for all end punctuation 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. In the us periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks.

He said we need to tell the boss right away she reported that the boss was in her words miffed. For people in the united states periods and commas go inside the quotation 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.