Period Before Or After Quotes Mla

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.

Period before or after quotes mla. But we must never speak of the times before the great rebirth. The placement of a comma or period after a quotation by eric wirth. The answer is both yes and no. Modern language association 2016.

After the quotation marks insert your parenthetical reference and after that place a period. Julio cortázar wrote many short stories including la noche boca arriba. Vertical enumerated lists next. The mla handbook notes by convention commas and periods that directly follow quotations go inside the closing quotation marks 88.

Read on to find out why and lessen the confusion. In any case block quotes don t need quotation marks to set them off from the remaining text even though they are direct quotes. The final period or comma goes inside the quotation marks even if it is not a part of the quoted material unless the quotation is followed by a citation. Note that the punctuation for the sentence goes after the parenthesis.

The reason for this convention is to improve the appearance of the text. Block quotes are long quotes that are separated from the surrounding text. Usually they appear as a separate paragraph or series of paragraphs with a different font a change in the line spacing or a wider margin. However if you are using quotation marks for a special word or phrase not quoting someone s writing or speech you can put question marks and exclamation marks outside the quotation.

Does punctuation go inside quotation marks. You ve got to be carefully taught wrote oscar hammerstein ii. If a citation in parentheses follows the quotation the period follows the citation. As you can see in the examples above when a comma or period comes at the end of a pair of quotation marks it goes inside the marks not outside.

See the examples in strunk white p. Period with parentheses or brackets. The convention goes back at least to the nineteenth. If a superscript footnote number is used it follows the period and the quotation marks.

The rule is the same for a list of titles. At the end of the quote put the period after the last word of the sentence followed by the parentheses. Please see the following handbook on reserve in the library for more information. In america this topic is not subject to debate.