The placement of punctuation marks within quotation marks varies between British and American English. In American English, periods and commas are usually placed within quotation marks, but there are exceptions, such as when quoting a letter or number. Question marks and semicolons may be placed outside of quotation marks in certain cases. Longer quotes are block indented without quotation marks. Consult with your teacher for preferred formatting.
When using quotation marks, people are faced with several choices about how to place punctuation such as commas and periods. If you’re writing with British standards, commas, periods, question marks and others fall naturally. Some are enclosed in quotes, if that makes sense, and some are outside of it. The standard rule of American punctuation is that periods go within quotation marks, like most commas, even if the punctuation is not part of the quote.
American English is notorious for its exceptions to the rules, and there’s a kind of incidence where it wouldn’t be the case for periods to go in quotation marks. If you put quotes around a letter or number, usually the period or comma doesn’t fit inside the quotes. Consider the following example:
I have three ‘B’s and one ‘A’.
This is the only incidence that ignores the fact that most periods are enclosed in quotation marks. The letter in quotes is alone.
In most other cases, however, you’ll find the dots going inside and so will the commas. Even if you’re quoting a couple of words from a text, commas, not part of the text, are included in the quotes:
The poet refers to the cemetery as “sad”, “heartbreaking”, “asleep” and “fat”.
Note the commas, although they are probably not part of the original quote. In British English, these would be enclosed in quotation marks.
While you may abide by the rule that most periods and commas go within quotation marks if you’re writing in American English, there are different rules for other types of punctuation. Question marks produce their own questions. A question mark may reside outside the quotation marks if it is not part of the quotation in a sentence that has the form of a question:
Did the poet say that human beings are “lost forever”?
Also, unless you’re quoting something that contains a semicolon, that too will come out outside the quotes.
The man said, “Stay away”; I walked away cautiously.
Don’t forget that when you use longer quotes in the block indent quote style, you don’t use the quotes at all. If you quote four or more lines of text, tab ten spaces for the entire quote and do not use quotation marks. Also, if you’re double-spaced most of your essay, you may need space-block indented quotes. Check with your teacher which method he prefers.
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