Period Inside Or Outside Quotes Mla

Read on to find out why and lessen the confusion.

Period inside or outside quotes mla. The period is unique among punctuation marks in that yes. British publishers tend to put the comma or period after the quotation mark. Does the period at the end of the quote go inside or outside of the quotation marks. Luckily when it comes to periods and commas the answer to whether they go inside or outside the quotation mark is much simpler.

As you might guess from our name apa style uses american style punctuation see p. He said we need to tell the boss right away she reported that the boss was in her words miffed. You ve got to be carefully taught wrote oscar hammerstein ii. Does punctuation go inside quotation marks.

92 of the 6th ed. The period always goes inside the quotation marks. This means that periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks. The main problem that people have with using quotes is also a fundamental one.

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. This however is not true for other punctuation marks long answer. Periods come inside with only one exception the period always comes inside closing quotation marks. 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.

All other punctuation marks are placed outside. Thus in the following sentence the comma is placed after taught. Place other punctuation inside quotation marks when that punctuation is part of what is being quoted such as a quoted question. If you re using american english they go inside.

The rule is the same for a list of titles. A comma or period that follows a closing double quotation mark hangs off by itself and creates a gap in the line of text since the space over the comma or period combines with the following word space. See the below examples and also the relevant sections in the mla handbook the bedford handbook and the use of quotations in the sample papers on reserve. 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.

The answer is both yes and no. 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. This rule applies even if only one quoted word ends the sentence.