1. Quotation Marks with Commas and Periods
The MLA Handbook notes, “By convention, commas and periods that directly follow quotations go inside the closing quotation marks” (88).
Look carefully at the following sentences:
“You’ve got to be carefully taught,” wrote Oscar Hammerstein II.
“After last night, I have only five dollars left,” moaned Robert.
The rule is the same for a list of titles:
Julio Cortázar wrote many short stories, including “La Noche Boca Arriba,” “Casa Tomada,” and “Babas del Diablo.”
It is also the same for instances where a title within a title comes at the end of a sentence:
A new approach to Flannery O’Connor’s short story can be found in the essay “The Uncanny Theology of ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find.’”
Malcolm X’s most famous speech is “The Bullet or the Ballot.”
This placement is traditional in the United States. Follow the examples above when writing an essay following MLA 8 formatting standards.
2. Quotation Marks with Dialogue: More
Look at this example again:
“After last night, I have only five dollars left,” moaned Robert.
When a quote is broken up by a speaker/dialogue tag (phrases such as “Robert said” or Robert moaned” or “Robert yelled”), the second comma is placed before the quotation marks:
“After last night, I have only five dollars left,” moaned Robert, “and I need to buy my chemistry textbook by tomorrow.”
“Well,” said Jessica, “then you shouldn’t have ordered the lobster at dinner.”
3. Quotation Marks with Question Marks
If a question mark s part of your quotation, it stays inside the quotation marks; however, if the question mark or exclamation point are not part of the quotation, they go outside the closing quotation mark.
The children asked, “Can we have ice cream for dinner?”
On the other hand, in the example below, the question applies to the entire sentence and not just the quoted material”
Do you actually like the song “Gangnam Style”?
How many times have you read “Cora Unashamed”?
4. Quotation Marks with Semi-Colons
Semi-colons are placed outside the quotation marks:
The committee declined to review those ballots “having no visible signatures”; however, they did review ballots that had been signed.
Final Note: In British style, commas and periods are placed outside the quotation marks. You may also see this placement in newspapers and magazines. Do not follow this practice when preparing an academic essay following mla formatting.
“You’ve got to be carefully taught”, wrote Oscar Hammerstein II.
Julio Cortázar wrote many short stories, including “La noche boca arriba”, “Casa tomada”, and “Babas del diablo”.
A new approach to Flannery O’Connor’s short story can be found in the essay “The Uncanny Theology of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find'”.
The point of conventions is that they provide common tools for understanding, so if you are preparing material in a British context, follow British rules. But if you are preparing a paper for a class or for publication in the United States, place periods and commas inside quotation marks.
1. Read our earlier post on what you can omit when quoting sources.
Works Cited
Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style. 2nd ed., Hartley and Marks, 1999.
The Chicago Manual of Style. 16th ed., U of Chicago P, 2010.
MLA Handbook. 8th ed., Modern Language Association of America, 2016.
Strunk, William, Jr., and E. B. White. The Elements of Style. 1959. 4th ed., Pearson, 2000.
Yagoda, Ben. “The Rise of ‘Logical Punctuation’.” Slate, 12 May 2011, www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2011/05/the_rise_of_logical_punctuation.html.
Taken from: “Why Do Periods and Commas Go Inside Quotation Marks in MLA Style?”
