Quotation Marks with Other
Punctuation Marks
Mini-Lesson #93a
Created by Akeem Richard
Writing Lab Assistant
April 2012
Commas and Periods
• When commas and periods are at the end of
quoted material, these marks normally go
inside the quotation marks (Heffernan 470).
• Ex: “It’s time for you to leave,” said Mimi.
• Ex: “Ideas,” writes Carl Jung, “spring from
something greater than the personal human being.”
• Ex: The governor stated, “I will not seek
reelection.”
Commas and Periods, cont.
• There is an exception to the previous rule:
“When a parenthetical source citation
immediately follows a quotation, place any
period or comma after the citation” (Fowler
413).
– Ex: One critic calls the essay “outrageous” (Olms
26).
– Ex: Partly because of “the cool calculation of its
delivery” (Olms 27), Swift’s satire still chills a
modern reader.
Semicolons and Colons
• Typically, semicolons and colons go outside
the quotation marks (413).
– Ex: A few years ago the slogan in elementary
education was “learning by playing”; now
educators are concerned with teaching basic skills.
– Ex: We all know what is meant by “inflation”:
more money buys less.
Dashes, Question Marks, and
Exclamation Points
• “When a dash, question mark, or exclamation point is part
of the quotation, put it inside quotation marks” (414).
– Ex: “Go away!” I yelled.
– Ex: You said, “Who is she?”
• “When a dash, question mark, or exclamation point applies
only to the larger sentence, not to the quotation, place it
outside the quotation marks” (414).
– Ex: Who said, “Now cracks a noble heart”?
– Ex: The woman called me “stupid”!
• In either case, the punctuation either inside or outside the
quotation marks is all that is needed to end its sentence. No
extra punctuation marks are needed.
Ellipses
• “Use a period and three spaced dots to show that you are
omitting the end of a quoted sentence” (Heffernan 470).
– Ex: Thoreau wrote: “We must learn to reawaken and keep
ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite
expectation of the dawn. . . .”
• “The period follows the last quoted word without a space,
and the fourth dot comes before the closing quotation mark.
Normally you may cut off the end of a quoted sentence in
this way only if what remains makes a complete sentence”
(470).
– If the quoted material ends with an ellipsis and is accompanied
by a parenthetical citation, leave a space before, after, and
between the three dots, and place a fourth dot flush to the right
of the citation.
Quoting Computer Code
• Consider the following sentence:
– Nowadays, a person typing a URL into an Internet
browser’s address bar does not have to type
“www.”
• Does the dot inside the quotation marks belong to the
computer code, or does the dot function as the period of
the sentence?
Quoting Computer Code, cont.
• Since periods typically go inside the quotation
marks, someone may assume that the dot in
question does not belong to the quoted computer
code.
• If the dot is not a part of the code, then only the
acronym for “World Wide Web” should be
omitted. If this assumption is true, then
“.google.com” should work. Try entering
“.google.com” into an address bar and see what
happens.
Quoting Computer Code, cont.
• Since “.google.com” is not a valid Internet
address, a person should then assume that the dot
in question belongs to the computer code. Try
entering “google.com” into an address bar and see
what happens.
• But if the person is an informed grammarian that
lacks computer knowledge, how would that
person know to treat that dot as a part of the code,
instead of a period that ends the sentence?
Quoting Computer Code, cont.
• There is no consensus on a rule for this
scenario. However, there are two ways to
avoid this confusion:
– Either change the font of the code to Courier,
without using quotation marks.
• Nowadays, a person typing a URL into an internet
browser’s address bar does not have to type www.
• Period in Courier: .
• Period in Times New Roman: .
Quoting Computer Code, cont.
– Or place the computer code inside a figure.
• Nowadays, a person typing a URL into an internet browser’s
address bar does not have to type the code in Figure 3.
www.
Figure 3
• Periods are not the only troublesome characters:
quotation marks, colons, and brackets are other
characters that are used in computing. Using
these two options can help to avoid the ambiguity.
Works Cited
Fowler, H. Ramsey, Aaron, Jane, and Brittenham,
Rebecca. The Little, Brown Handbook.
New York: Longman, 1998. Print.
Heffernan, James, and John Lincoln. Writing: A
College Handbook. New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 1994. Print.