English is used around the world, but its rules may vary significantly in different countries.
Here are just a few reminders of the American system’s requirements.
- We know that we end a sentence with either a period, exclamation mark, or a question mark, right? But how many of us know that in our system, if we end with quotation marks, the period or a comma MUST go inside/before the final quotation mark? Yup. No matter what. It must.
Yes: Sheila called him a “cad.”
No: Sheila called him a “cad”.
Question marks, exclamation points, colons,
and semicolons go inside final quotation
marks only if they are part of the quoted
material; otherwise, they go outside/after.
But if we end with either an exclamation
mark or a question mark, the final quotation mark can go either inside or after, depending
on the meaning.
Yes: Sheila yelled, “He’s a cad!”
Yes: Did Sheila yell, “He’s a cad”?
- Use single quotation marks only inside
doubles. Do not use them by themselves.
Yes: Sheila yelled, “He’s a cad!”
No: Sheila yelled, ‘He’s a cad!’
- Never separate two full sentences with just a comma. Either use another end mark and end the first sentence, or use a semicolon (;) to separate them.
Yes: Sheila called Jim a cad; however, she was really just joking.
No: Sheila called Jim a cad, however, she was really just joking.
No: Sheila called Jim a cad, she was really just joking.
A footnote: Always use quotation marks,
brackets, braces, and parentheses in pairs.
Want more? https://www.grammarly.com/punctuation
