{"id":167,"date":"2014-11-30T20:00:12","date_gmt":"2014-11-30T20:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/?p=167"},"modified":"2018-06-26T15:00:47","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T19:00:47","slug":"quotation-marks-inside-or-outside-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/quotation-marks-inside-or-outside-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Quotation Marks: Inside or Outside? Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Quote<\/a>In the last post I tried to reinforce an absolute rule for “American English”: The two most common punctuation marks, periods and commas, ALWAYS GO\u00a0INSIDE\u00a0quotation marks, despite our logic telling us otherwise. (“American English” because the rule is different in the UK and some parts of Canada.) Now what about question marks, exclamation points, colons, and semicolons?\u00a0Here you go.<\/p>\n

We have to think about it<\/h2>\n

Question marks<\/span>\u00a0can go inside or outside quotation marks, depending on the relationship of the punctuation mark to the section in quotes. Trust your logic.<\/p>\n

Janie asked, “How old do you think Uncle Bert is?”<\/em>\u00a0Logical, right? Janie posed a question, so the question mark indicates that, and then we end the quote with quotation marks.<\/p>\n

Did you really call Uncle Bert a “geezer”<\/em>? Logical again. It makes sense to enclose “geezer” in quotes and then punctuate the sentence correctly\u2013\u2013with a question mark.<\/p>\n

Exclamation points<\/span> can go inside or outside as well, for the same reasons.<\/p>\n

The shortstop yelled, \u201cGot it!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Stop calling me a \u201cdoofus\u201d!<\/em><\/p>\n

Don’t even think about it<\/h2>\n

As with periods and commas, where we can go on autopilot, semicolons<\/span> and colons<\/span> are similar\u2013\u2013but in the opposite direction.\u00a0They ALWAYS GO OUTSIDE the quotation marks (which is logical).<\/p>\n

She called her absence a \u201cpersonal day\u201d; I guess to her the World Series is personal.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Four of our culinary students are competing in the \u201cSouper Bowl\u201d: Kelly, Hannah, Mo, and John.<\/em><\/p>\n

So we have six punctuation marks to worry about, and here are the rules one more time:<\/p>\n

Periods<\/span> and commas<\/span> always go inside quotation marks. Don’t apply logic.<\/p>\n

Question marks<\/span> and exclamation points<\/span>\u00a0can go inside or outside based on what’s happening in the sentence.<\/p>\n

Semicolons<\/span> and colons<\/span> always go outside the quotation marks because we can’t come up with a situation where the opposite would be logical.<\/p>\n

In addition to presenting workshops on writing in the workplace, Norm Friedman is a writer, editor, and writing coach. His\u00a0<\/em>100+ Instant Writing Tips<\/span>\u00a0is a brief \u201cnon-textbook\u201d to help individuals overcome common writing errors and write with more finesse and impact. Learn more at\u00a0http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/index.shtml<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last post I tried to reinforce an absolute rule for “American English”: The two most common punctuation marks, periods and commas, ALWAYS GO\u00a0INSIDE\u00a0quotation marks, despite our logic telling us otherwise. (“American English” because the rule is different in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":288,"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.normfriedman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}