From the course: Writing with Proper Punctuation
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How to combine quotation marks with periods and commas
From the course: Writing with Proper Punctuation
How to combine quotation marks with periods and commas
- People often ask how to use commas with quotation marks. Does it come and go inside or outside the closing quotation mark? The reason you may be confused is that the rules are different for American and British English. We'll do the American rule first, since it's simpler. In American English, commas always go inside the closing quotation mark, whether you're dealing with word somebody said, a chapter title, or a word being used as a word. If something is enclosed in quotation marks and you need a comma after it, the comma always goes inside that closing quotation mark. I remember this with a US-centric memory trick. Inside the US, inside the quotation mark. The British English rules are much more complicated. In general, if the comma is part of the quotation, you keep it inside. And if it's not part of the quotation, you put it outside. Most of the time, it's not part of the quotation, so it goes on the outside like…
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