Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Punctuation with Dialogue #2

Question marks and exclamation points are inside quote marks if they are part of the dialogue. If they are not part of the dialogue, they go outside. Simple enough, right?
“Are you coming tonight?”
“Get that straw out of my ear!”

Did she just say, “Go ahead”?
Then he rolled his eyes and said, “Whatever”!
Note how these two are sentences that are only partially made up of dialogue.

The same rule applies to commas and periods only if you are British. In American writing, commas and periods always always always go inside quote marks because it looks rather lame to leave a comma or period hanging outside like that:
The policy is “no exceptions”, which is fine with me. (British)
The police is “no exceptions,” which is fine with me. (American)

No comments:

Post a Comment