Quote Mark Punctuation

Punctuation

Repeat after me. We are in the United States of America. Here, we approach quote marks differently than do our cousins across the Atlantic. (We’re talking about Great Britain, in case you didn’t get that.) I wouldn’t mention it, but it is a common mistake.

If you work for an American publication, or if you attend an American university like NYU, quote marks almost always go after the punctuation. That means you almost never place a quote mark inside a comma, question mark, or period. (Yeah, there are a few exceptions, which we will get to a bit later.) For example, Zelda laughed and said, “I never thought I’d travel to a petting zoo to pet a hyena.” Or Shakespeare once wrote, “To be, or not to be. That is the question.” Open quote, sentence, period, close quote. Easy, right? Yet you might be amazed how many people mess this up.

Anyway, the same rules apply to commas. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” the actor said. “It smells like… victory.” See? Or “You must remember this,” he said. “A kiss is still a kiss. A sigh is just a sigh.” Open quote, sentence, comma, close quote.

You put quote marks outside the punctuation even when quoting only one word. For instance: He told me he refuses to eat blue cheese because it “stinks.”

Try these on for size. In all the examples the quote mark comes after the comma. Then, depending on the sentence structure, the ‘said’ is followed by either a comma or a period.

“Pass the mashed potatoes,” he said, “and while you’re at it, how about some kimchi, too?”

“My cat’s name is Satchmo,” she said. “He’s named after the great jazz trumpeter, Louis Armstrong.”

“I have never been to Chengdu,” the old woman said, “but I have traveled to Xian.”

“I promise,” he said, “to make sushi, just as soon as I can buy fresh tuna.”

Joni Mitchell sang, “They paved paradise. And put up a parking lot.”

Notice that the “said” part can go in lots of different places. For style, it’s good to vary your prose. That means, depending on what sounds appealing, you can write the same sentence different ways just by moving the ‘said’ part around.

Like this:

Yves Saint Laurent once said, “Fashions fade, style is eternal.” Or you could go with: “Fashions fade,” Yves Saint Laurent once said. “Style is eternal.”

In news writing, it’s often better to use ‘he said,’ not ‘said he.’ Like “The veal chops are on sale,” Benjamin Smith said. Not “The veal chops are on sale,” said Benjamin Smith. It’s not wrong, but it feels children’s bookish.

Finally, with quotes, you should almost always use ‘said.’ Just ‘said.’ Not ‘said with a smile’ or ‘laughed’ ‘chortled,’ ‘sang,’ averred, pontificated, etc. Just ‘said.’ Your quotes will be crisper that way. Plus, you can’t giggle, chortle, or laugh when you’re speaking anyway. (Try it.) “That was a great party,” she laughed. If someone literally did that, it would sound mighty odd, wouldn’t it? You could say, though: She laughed, then said, “That was a great party.” Let the words in the quote themselves convey their meaning.

Exceptions

Remember we mentioned that there would be exceptions? Of course there are. This is English! First, colons, semicolons, and dashes go outside quotation marks, unlike commas and periods. Fear not, though: Colons, semicolons and dashes should be used sparingly, so you will seldom need to do this.

Sally snorted and said, “I don’t believe in ghosts” -- right before one slipped under the floorboards.

Her favorite song is from the Disney movie “Frozen”; she devoted three weeks to learning how to sing it.

She cited some lines from her favorite poem, Mark Strand’s “Keeping Things Whole”: “In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing.”

Another (related) exception involves “terminal punctuation,” which occurs when it is not part of the quote. This often involves the need for single quote marks inside the standard double ones:

She asked, “Do you actually like Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’?” There’s the actual quote, then there are the quote marks around a song title.

Exercise: Click on this link to choose the answer with correct punctuation.