Quotation marks are among the most confusing punctuations to use, as so much writing out there don’t follow proper convention. It is one of the most common punctuation marks that are being confused by a lot of people. Seriously, randomly pull out any ten essays submitted in class and you’ll find how badly the uses of quotations with other punctuations vary.
A quotation mark is always use together with its pair. Some would often call it as double quote and other would call it as an inverted comma. However, the uses of quotation marks are not being practiced by a lot of people, usually students. Common mistakes that this punctuation mark is often use is when someone is going to write an essay. Since essay is a free writing, quotation marks are always present in this piece.
Quotation marks can be single or double but the pair should always be with its corresponding pair. Like for example, you cannot use an opening quotation mark with single quotation mark and ends with double or vice versa. Open double is always paired to a close double quotation mark, same as with single quotation mark.
What’s funny is, the rules for this are quite simple. It’s just that most people don’t pay that much attention to it, treating it like its secondary in importance to other facets of good writing. Basically, the following are the prescribed rules on using quotes with other punctuation marks.
o With commas, always put them inside quotation marks, as in: “This,” according to the governor….
o With periods, always put them inside quotation marks, as in: The story, publisher Harper claims, is “the author’s most poignant piece of work.”
o With semicolons, always put them outside the quotation marks, as in: They called him “Butch”; as such…
o With colons, always put them outside the quotation marks.
o With question marks and exclamation points, put them inside if they is part of the text being quoted; otherwise, keep them outside.
We only use double quotation marks to enclose a quote, titles and to words or phrases that are slang and irony. There are times that within a quote that was enclose with double quotation marks, single quotation marks are also present. It is like you are using words or phrases inside a quote. Just bear in mind that within a quote, you can use either double in a single quote or single in a double quote.
There is no need to confuse yourself more on which quotation mark would you rather use, either a single (‘ ‘) or a double (“ “), as long as you had use it in the proper way as mention a while ago as to when we are going to use quotation marks.
Just bear in mind that within a quote, you can use either double in a single quote or single in a double quote.
The above five rules are the only guidelines you need to remember for using quotation marks with other punctuations. Sure, there may be some exceptions, but they will be rare. Of course, you can always just use a grammar checking software to identify punctuation transgressions, saving yourself plenty of time in the process.
Author Resource:
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