Project Checklist
Proofreading for Quotation Marks with Other Punctuation Marks
· Are your commas and periods inside the closing quotation mark unless a citation in parentheses follows the closing quotation mark (in which case the period follows the parentheses)?
Comma: She worried that we would “undervalue return investments,” but I assured her we had high hopes.
Period: Walter Mitty was overheard saying “puppy biscuits.”
But: Yeats describes “the great wings beating still” (1).
· Are your colons and semicolons outside the closing quotation mark?
Colon: Renoir delighted in the peaceful moments of “companionship”: people in a park, a mother and daughter, two friends.
Semicolon: Hemingway bragged about “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”; he felt it was one of his finer technical achievements.
· Are your question marks, exclamation points, and dashes inside the quotation marks if they are part of the quotation and outside if they are part of the larger sentence?
Inside: Ophelia asks, “How does your Honor for this many a day?” “Watch your head!” she yelled, right after I’d bumped it on the cupboard.
“Remember to flip the switch—the one for the lights—” was the last thing I heard her say.
Outside: What does he mean when he warns about her “quaint honor”?
If you want to be heard, “Take it to the streets”!
Near the beginning of DeLillo’s White Noise, the flight attendant— consulting the “Manual of Disasters”—has a complete breakdown of command presence.