Period Before Or After Quote Marks

The american style was developed based on typography.

Period before or after quote marks. The mla handbook notes by convention commas and periods that directly follow quotations go inside the closing quotation marks 88. The reason for this convention is to improve the appearance of the text. The rule is the same for a list of titles. When setting up type requiring the period to precede the quotation marks allowed better kerning.

The british don t do it that way. The placement of a comma or period after a quotation by eric wirth. In america this topic is not subject to debate. Use single quotation marks for quotations within quotations.

In the us periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks. Julio cortázar wrote many short stories including la noche boca arriba. Period marks go before the. See the examples in strunk white p.

You ve got to be carefully taught wrote oscar hammerstein ii. They are inclined to place commas and periods logically rather than conventionally depending on whether the punctuation belongs to the quotation or to the sentence that contains the quotation just as we do with question marks and exclamation points. Period with parentheses or brackets. Only the quoted material is a question so the question mark belongs only to the quote and must remain within the quotation marks.

After the quotation marks because if put before the quotation mark that makes the quote seem like if it continues after what you wrote even if the quote has ended. Thus in the following sentence the comma is placed after taught. Vertical enumerated lists next. In american style the period always comes before the closing 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. Now keep in mind that this comma and period inside the quotation marks business is strictly american usage. In a town outside brisbane i saw tourists go home written on a wall. Colons and semicolons are placed outside quotations while question marks and exclamation marks follow the logic of the sentence.

When a comma or period is needed after a quotation publishers in the united states typically put the punctuation mark before the closing quotation mark. The entire sentence is a question so the question mark goes after the quotation marks 2 she said how many people are here unlike the previous example the entire sentence is not a question. This page has examples showing the different conventions for placing punctuation inside or outside quotation marks. In all other situations the period comes inside the closing quotation marks.

But then someone told me pay it no mind lad note that the period goes inside both the single and double quotation marks.