Guidelines

Do you put a full stop before or after quotation marks?

Do you put a full stop before or after quotation marks?

If the quotation ends a sentence or is a sentence in its own right, place the final full stop before the final quotation mark.

Does a full stop go before or after speech marks UK?

The full stop should be placed before the closing quotation mark when the sentence quoted is a full grammatical sentence, i.e a sentence that can stand on its own and is complete.

Where does the full stop go with quotation marks?

In American English, the punctuation mark (i.e., the full stop or comma) always comes before the closing quotation mark. Conversely, in Australian English, the punctuation mark will usually come after the closing quotation mark, unless the quotation is also a complete sentence. Compare the following two examples.

Where does the full stop go after quotation marks?

Of course, the full stop belongs to the carrier sentence—that is, it applies to the whole sentence, not just the quotation—so it sits outside the closing quotation mark.

How do you punctuate a quotation?

Use a single quotation mark to begin it and punctuate it as you would a regular quote, with the period coming before you close the quotation with a second single quotation mark. Normally, a quote within a quote like this will be brief, since people usually use only short direct quotes from another person.

Does question mark go inside or outside of quotation marks?

According to AP style, a question mark is inside quotation marks if that part is the question and outside the quotation marks if the whole sentence is a question. (The same rule applies to exclamation marks and dashes. Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks.)

Does punctuation go inside quotation marks?

Quotation marks and adjacent punctuation. Though not necessarily logical, the American rules for multiple punctuation with quotation marks are firmly established. (See here for a brief explanation of the British style.) Commas and periods that are part of the overall sentence go inside the quotation marks, even though they aren’t part of the original quotation.

What do quotation marks imply?

Definition of quotation mark. : one of a pair of punctuation marks ” ” or ‘ ‘ used chiefly to indicate the beginning and the end of a quotation in which the exact phraseology of another or of a text is directly cited.