For instance, if my friend has been insulted, I might write, Did she really say, "You're an idiot"? The question mark outside of the quotation marks shows that the question is part of what I'm saying, not part of the quote. The only exception to this rule is when someone says something about a quote.
The exclamation point is inside the quotation marks because up is part of the quote. Here, said is outside of the quotation marks because it's not part of the quote so the comma is outside the quotation marks too. Then the punctuation mark should be outside too, like the comma in this example: But if the word before the punctuation mark isn't part of the quote, it will be outside the quotation marks. Because the word is inside the quotation marks, the question mark is too. In this sentence, the word movies is part of the quote. If that word is inside the quotation marks, the punctuation mark should be inside too, like in this example: A punctuation mark next to a quotation mark usually stays next to the word right before it. But if you weren't sure, here's a simple rule to help you figure it out. If you chose the blue sentence, you're right. For instance, can you tell which of these sentences is correct? Sometimes people have trouble knowing where to put punctuation marks if they're next to quotation marks. When a quotation ends with a question mark or exclamation mark, you don't need a comma before the tag -just put a period after the tag, like we did in this example. But the first part of the quote has a question mark at the end, so we can't put a comma there. This sentence has a tag in the middle of it. What about this sentence?Īs you probably guessed, because the quote comes before the tag in the sentence the comma does too. Remember how we said the comma belongs between the quote and the tag? This tag has a direct quote on both sides, so it has commas on both sides too. Because the quote is before the tag in this case, we put the comma before the tag too. In that example, said Dorothy is the tag. The comma is there to separate the quote from the tag-the phrase that tells us who's being quoted. In our last example, you can see that there's a comma between the words anymore and said. Quotation marks like this are called scare quotes. For instance, I could write: She says her room is "clean." The quotation marks mean she says her room is clean, but that I don't really believe it. You can also use quotation marks to show that you don't agree with or believe something. The sentence I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore has quotation marks before and after it because it's a direct quote from Dorothy. Because we used his exact words, it was a direct quote. We used quotation marks to repeat what Harry said. Whenever you use quotation marks, you're showing exactly what someone said or wrote. Quotation marks are a type of punctuation you use to show that you're quoting what someone else said. en/grammar/semicolons/content/ What are quotation marks?