When Does Punctuation Go Inside or Outside of Quotation Marks?

Quotation marks written on on blackboard

I have a confession. One of my biggest pet peeves is unnecessary quotation marks — those that are scattered willy-nilly across a restaurant’s menu as if they’re pointing out special items. That’s not what quotation marks are intended for. You want bold or italics for that. And now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let’s talk about how to use punctuation correctly with quotation marks.

Quotation marks around a word, phrase, or sentence have specific rules, and depending on whether you’re writing dialogue, quoting a person, or citing a specific word or phrase, the quotation marks and the related punctuation move to where they’re most useful.

However, the rules can change depending on the dialect of English and if you’re following a specific style guide. The grammatical differences are most distinct in American vs. British English. American style requires that a period or a comma come before the closing quotation mark (as outlined in the AP Stylebook, the Chicago Manual of Style, MLA Style, and APA Style).

Punctuation goes inside the quotation marks when quoting a direct phrase that ends the sentence or quoting something within a sentence. For example, you can quote a line from a play:

In Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s witches says, “Something wicked this way comes.”

When the witch said, “Something wicked this way comes,” I felt a chill.

Or you may put quotation marks around a single word or phrase to reference that term:

Shakespeare’s witch uses the word “wicked,” an early example of pairing the concepts.

Punctuation stays inside the quotation marks whether at the end of the sentence or after a comma. For quotes within quotes, follow the same rule.

On the British side, the first thing you might notice is a swap to using single quotation marks first, and double quotation marks to quote things within the single marks. For example: Eleanor said, ‘When I spoke to John after class, he told me, “I’ll be there at 5.”’ The Oxford University Press house style allows for punctuation inside the quotation marks only when it’s part of the direct quote, as in the example above. If calling out an individual word, or quoting an incomplete sentence, the punctuation goes outside the quotation mark. But as our global communications break down barriers, some writers argue that using punctuation outside the quotation marks like this is the “logical style.”

However, both American and British English grammar guides agree on exclamation and question marks. If you’re quoting a word or phrase within a sentence, and the sentence ends with a question or exclamation mark (but the quoted phrase does not), the punctuation goes outside the quotation marks. For example: What does Macbeth mean when he says “it is a tale told by an idiot”? Surely it wasn’t “signifying nothing”! When the question or exclamation mark is a part of the quoted text, make sure to tuck it inside the quotation mark: I could hear my friend shouting “Stop! Wait for me!” as he chased after the bus.