Do Quotes Need Punctuation

In any case block quotes don t need quotation marks to set them off from the remaining text even though they are direct quotes.

Do quotes need punctuation. American usage has always preferred double. To write proper english you need to follow all the punctuation rules even the illogical ones. Quotation marks are used for components such as chapter titles in a book individual episodes of a tv series songs from a broadway show or a music album titles of articles or essays in print or online and shorter works such as short stories and poems. In order to determine how to punctuate the phrase that comes before a quotation you need to know whether the phase is an independent clause.

When the speaker tag comes first put a comma. As you might guess from our name apa style uses american style punctuation see p. It s the big and little trick. Quotations within a sentence aren t always capitalized however.

Place other punctuation inside quotation marks when that punctuation is part of what is being quoted such as a quoted question. Here you have three options. The use of quotation marks also called inverted commas is very slightly complicated by the fact that there are two types. Don t capitalize quotes that are only partial sentences.

Though not necessarily logical the american rules for multiple punctuation with quotation marks are firmly established. Single quotes and double quotes as a general rule british usage has in the past usually preferred single quotes for ordinary use but double quotes are now increasingly common. Consider the sentences below and note the lack of capitalization in quotes within these sentences. In british english quotation marks are often called inverted commas also known as quote marks quotes and speech marks.

Quotations must have appropriate punctuation. Quotation marks and direct quotations. Usually they appear as a separate paragraph or series of paragraphs with a different font a change in the line spacing or a wider margin. Many teachers require students to use modern language association style for research papers and essays covering language arts cultural studies and the humanities there is a trick to remembering how to treat titles in mla style and it works well enough that you can commit most types of titles to memory.

Publication manual as do several other major style guides such as ap chicago and mla the table below elaborates with examples for each punctuation mark. Block quotes are long quotes that are separated from the surrounding text. When the quotation is merged into a clause no punctuation is necessary to divide them. When the quote is a piece of a bigger quote or a sentence fragment no capitalization is necessary.

Quotations with speaker tags dumb rule 1. 92 of the 6th ed. Punctuation with quotations gives many people problems.