I want to talk about quotation marks.
Why?
Because we need them. You can’t accomplish everything with italics (though I definitely make italics work overtime with /sarcasm font and the like).
So, from what I’ve noticed while doing edits and proofreads, the trickiest thing about quotation marks for most people seems to be how you order them with other punctuation marks. Comma outside the quotes? Inside? Smooshed in the middle like this ‘ , ‘ ? Nah, bro. It’s way easier than all that. Let’s go over the basics.
We’ll start with what we’ll call the most common punctuation marks (I have no real data to back that up, btw): periods–also known as full stops–and commas. In the U.S., we put these marks INSIDE the quotes; this can differ in the UK, just so you know.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Han murmured as he considered the grammar post.
He hoped that one day he would truly become a “scruffy-looking nerf herder.”
Moving on to the “weirder” punctuation marks (don’t be mad, guys! I love you all and I’m weird, too!), we’ll talk about colons, semicolons, and dashes. These little beauties go OUTSIDE quotation marks, like so:
One day I’m going to take her “keen fashion advice”: the day I die.
Sometimes I wondered whether this was, as he said, “kismet”; later I realized it was just indigestion.
He asked if I knew how to do the “uptown boogie”–you’re dang skippy I do.
* A quick aside about dashes. We’ve got a couple to work with. There’s the em dash and the en dash (and double em dashes and triple em dashes, but we’re not going for broke here). The en dash is called such because it’s about the same width as the letter N. The em dash is about the same width as the letter M. The em dash is commonly used to bracket an interpolation–a statement you need or want to stand out in a sentence–especially if you want to draw the eye to it with more oomph than you get by bracketing a statement in commas. (Don’t try this with just en dashes (-) because then it looks like you’ve hyphenated random words and it’s hard to make sense of.) In MS Office, typing an em dash can be accomplished by typing your word, then two dashes, then the next word; this is all done with no spaces in between any of it: it is just WordDashDashWord. The program will automatically merge the two en dashes into one long, fancy em dash. You can also insert it via the Symbol menu. Or you can just let it exist as the two en dashes partnered up. There are some different approaches/opinions on these out there. Mine is based on information from the Government Printing Office Style Manual and The Little, Brown Handbook (I think I have the eighth edition; I bought my copy at a used book store). Okay, so it turns out this “quick aside” wasn’t quick at all. I tend to overdo it when I talk about dashes. But in my defense, there’s a lot to say about them. I only skimmed the surface here.
Moving along to other less common punctuation, what do we do with exclamation and interrogation points when we have quotes? Well, that depends on what you’re quoting. Does the question mark or exclamation point go with the original quote? Then it stays inside. If it instead belongs to the entire statement, it goes outside. Here are some examples:
And then he had the audacity to say, “do you know who I am?”
Was I supposed to respond with “an idiot“?
So, anyway, the guy shouted, “I’ll have you fired for this!”
Then–listen to this–I yawned and said, “cool story, bro“! He was pissed!
BTW, if you should find yourself in a position where you need to write extensive dialogue, I had this handy little conversation saved. It’s a fun way to walk through the different punctuation options if you have a hard time remembering how written dialogue works and/or looks (me. me all day long.).
Anywho, I’m glad we had this talk (read?)…moment. As I believe I mentioned before, I am far from the be-all, end-all of grammatical knowledge. The Grammar Girl holds that spot, bless her. I’m just a dude that’s playing a dude, disguised as another dude. No, but seriously, I’m just sharing some things I’ve noticed and/or picked up over the years.
Do you have any other particular issues with quotation marks? Any deep-seated fears in the punctuation or grammar realm? Go ahead and share. We’re all friends here.
Thanks for stopping by!
Resources:
The Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips: “How to Use Quotation Marks”
Grammarly article: “Em Dash”
Decalcify Your Brain 