Tell me more ×
English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 7 down vote favorite
2

What is the rule for comma placement before a quotation mark? When should it go before and when should it go after the quotation mark?

share|improve this question
2  
Quotation marks come in pairs, one before and one after the quoted text. The quoted text itself should never either start or end with a comma. So the answer is you can only put a comma before the quote mark that introduces a quote, or after the quote mark that terminates a quote. – FumbleFingers Nov 15 '11 at 23:39

4 Answers

up vote 19 down vote accepted

In American literature and university courses, the method for introducing a quotation is the same as the British English style: the comma is placed after the last word that introduces the quotation.

Martin said, “Who brought that dog?”

As for the closing quotation mark, American English prefers the comma to be placed before the ending quotation mark.

In her notebook, Sheila wrote that the sun was “beet-red,” but after the game she had seen it “disappear over the bleachers.”

share|improve this answer
+1 for this excellent answer which "gets it right." It's also the same here in Canada, where "commas," and other punctuation such as "periods," "exclamation points," "interrogation marks," etc., are generally contained within a set of quotation marks. In all the different schools I attended, the English teachers always adhered to this rule as well, so there's some history of this in teaching as well. – Randolf Richardson Nov 16 '11 at 2:50
3  
However, one exception with interrogation marks can be: Did the cat say "antidisestablishmentarianism"? In this case, placing the interrogation mark outside of the quotation marks communicates to the reader that the cat isn't asking a question when saying this word; such context can be critical. (It's important to note that there are other exceptions as well, which work in a similar manner.) – Randolf Richardson Nov 16 '11 at 2:55
up vote 8 down vote

The above mentioned rules are often broken in the context of computer programming. It does not always result from the fact that a poster doesn't know the rules, but it would just be misleading, eg.

After that you need to issue "find . -name *.jpg {};."

In the above example the last full stop is NOT a part of the command and, if typed as such, would lead to errors.

share|improve this answer
3  
+1 because technical contexts are known exceptions to this when it's either particularly burdensome, or not appropriate, to place the data on a separate [and often indented] line of its own. – Randolf Richardson Nov 16 '11 at 2:51
up vote 4 down vote

The answers here are correct, if the original question is concerned exclusively with full quotes — aka grammatically whole sentences. If, however, we were to also consider partial quotes (a fragment of a sentence that could not stand alone), the punctuation rules are quite different. In almost every case, no comma will precede a partial quote. If that partial quote falls at the end of the sentence, then the period will of course go inside the closing quote mark.

A partial quote has a variety of grammatical functions in a sentence and cannot get the same punctuation every time.

share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

Larry Trask dealt with this thoroughly in the 'Penguin Guide to Punctutation'. The text is now available here http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/department/docs/punctuation/node30.html#SECTION00091000000000000000

share|improve this answer
1  
Trask declares a comma preceding a quotation as "bad style" -- interesting. – The English Chicken Nov 16 '11 at 11:30
@Jen: As he says, it's pointless, but it's still frequently found, I suspect. – Barrie England Nov 16 '11 at 11:40
1  
It really is pointless in a way, but maybe there is a difference if the quote is a full sentence rather than an excerpt? That's how I've always seen it and used it myself. – The English Chicken Nov 16 '11 at 14:23

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.