Tuesday, October 2, 2012

punctuation - Where should I put the comma? Inside or outside the quotation marks?




I need to put a quote in my research paper. My friends give me different answers so I'm confused now...




Would it be




According to "Title", "blah blah blah."




or




According to "Title," "blah blah blah."




Answer



Depends on the context. Imagine the sentence doesn't have quotes:




According to Fred, astrophysics is a rapidly growing field.




You can substitute "Fred" for anything, including some title. Note that the comma would be where it is, regardless of what you substitute for the word Fred. The comma is not part of the title, so the comma does not belong inside the quote. Therefore in this context you put the comma after the quote, like so:





According to "Astrophysics: Growing Rapidly", astrophysics is a rapidly growing field.




You typically only put the punctuation inside the quotes if you are writing dialogue or if you are quoting a sentence that includes punctuation.




"According to Fred," said Bob, "astrophysics is a rapidly growing field."



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