Quotations can bring your writing to life — the reader imagines someone saying the words?but quotations are also vexing to format. Not only do you have to follow different rules depending on what other punctuation marks you mix with your quotation marks, but people in different countries also follow different rules, so you may see quotation marks handled differently in high-quality publications from different countries.
Quotation Marks with Semicolons, Colons, and Dashes
First, let’s review the easy (but rare) stuff: semicolons, colons, and dashes always go outside quotation marks:
Bob snorted and said, “I don’t believe in zombies”— right before thirty of them emerged from the tunnel.
Her favorite song was “Gangnam Style”; she spent weeks trying to learn the dance.
She sang her favorite line from “I Don’t Wanna Stop”: “You’re either in or in the way.”
Quotation Marks with Question Marks and Exclamation Points
Stepping up the ladder of quotation-mark complexity we find question marks and exclamation points: where they go depends on your sentence. If the question mark or exclamation point is part of your quotation, it stays inside; but if the question mark or exclamation point are not part of the quotation, they go outside the closing quotation mark.
In the next examples, the terminal punctuation is part of the quotation, so it stays inside the final quotation mark:
Reynold asked, “Can we have ice cream for dinner?”
Mom snapped and shouted, “No, we cannot have ice cream for dinner!”
On the other hand, in these examples, the terminal punctuation is not part of the quotation — it applies to the whole sentence — so it goes outside the final quotation mark:
Do you actually like “Gangnam Style”?
I can’t believe you lied to me about the ending of “The Sixth Sense”!
Quotation Marks with Commas and Periods
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). I use this memory trick: Inside the US, inside the quotation marks. Here are some examples:
“Don’t underestimate me,” she said with a disarmingly friendly smile.
I can never remember how to spell “bureaucracy.”
Don’t get confused when you see this handled differently in The Economist or on the BBC website; just remember that it’s different in those publications because the British do it differently.
Compositors — people who layout printed material with type — made the original rule that placed periods and commas inside quotation marks to protect the small metal pieces of type from breaking off the end of the sentence. The quotation marks protected the commas and periods. In the early 1900s, it appears that the Fowler brothers (who wrote a famous British style guide called The King’s English) began lobbying to make the rules more about logic and less about the mechanics of typesetting. They won the British battle, but Americans didn’t adopt the change. That’s why we have different styles.
But there is one exception.
Exceptions
People often ask if there are exceptions to the American rule that periods and commas go inside the closing quotation mark. What if the thing in quotation marks is a title? What if it’s a word being defined? Nope. Those aren’t exceptions. The only exception I know of in American English is that sometimes in technical writing, when you’re designating something that a user should type into a text box, it’s important for readers to know whether the punctuation should be included in what they type. In such instances, it’s OK to break the traditional rules and put periods and commas outside the quotation marks if it makes your meaning clearer:
To make an em dash in HTML, type “—”.
Although it is acceptable to break the rules, it is usually better to use a method other than quotation marks to highlight your instructions. Bold face, italics, and colored fonts all work for highlighting text.
To make an em dash in HTML, type —.
To make an em dash in HTML, type —.
To make an em dash in HTML, type —.
Often, I find that the best method is to put the instructions on a separate line.
To make an em dash in HTML, type the following:
—
Double Quotation Marks with Single Quotation Marks
Another British-American difference is how we use single quotation marks and double quotation marks. The British use single quotation marks far more often than Americans. In America, we use double quotation marks in nearly all cases, and we use single quotation marks if we need to place a quotation within another quotation:
The defendant testified as follows: “I heard Sam say, ‘Hide the files from Delia.’ ”
When the single quotation mark and double quotation mark fall next to each other, as in the above example, you can improve readability by putting a space between the two marks. Professional print typesetters use something called a “thin space,” which is thinner than a standard space.
| HTML Codes | |
| Thin space |   |
| Non-Breaking Space | |
Summary
In summary, these are the ways you combine quotation marks with other punctuation marks:
- Semicolons, colons, and dashes always go outside the closing quotation mark.
- Periods and commas always go inside the closing quotation mark (in American English).
- Question marks and exclamation points require you to think about the sentence a little to determine where they go.
Quotation mark image courtesy of Shutterstock.
