I have the following sentence:
The program identifies particular “targets” and “identifiers:” the “targets” are people who are suspected of committing a crime.
Does the colon go inside the quotes or outside of them?
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Sign up to join this communityI have the following sentence:
The program identifies particular “targets” and “identifiers:” the “targets” are people who are suspected of committing a crime.
Does the colon go inside the quotes or outside of them?
While my edition (14th) of CMOS is getting long in the tooth, I don’t believe the guidance has changed:
5.104 The colon should be placed outside quotation marks or parentheses. When matter ending with a colon is quoted, that colon is dropped:
Kego had three objections to “Filmore’s Summer”: it was contrived; the characters were flat; the dialogue was unrealistic.
@Sven Yargs notes in a comment that the guidance remains in place in the 16th (2010) edition:
6.10 Other punctuation in relation to closing quotation marks Colons and semicolons—unlike periods and commas—follow closing quotation marks; ..."
Although this does not answer your question directly, reading your sentence, I would think that the quotation marks could be eliminated. There is no need for scare quotes in that sentence, since there is nothing unusual or inaccurate about your usage.