Quotations and Exclamation Marks [duplicate]

Question

I am writing an email reply and want to confirm if the punctuation below is correct.

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In response to your question, if it is available, my answer is “yes!"

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EDIT: Also, should the exclamation mark be inside the the quotations or after.

Answer 1

Your "it" should be the noun it's replacing (in the above version it means if the question is available). Your commas should be dashes or parentheses. But your ""yes!"" is perfect! (Without, of course, these extra quotation marks which I need to use to talk about it).

Answer 2

Without knowing what the question was, it's hard to see any justification for using an exclamation point. Replace it with a period. Exclamation points should be used very sparingly. Actually, when the words yes and no are used alone, that is, not as part of a longer quotation, you don't need to use quotation marks. In other words, you could write

. . . my answer is yes.