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Blog / Punctuation with Quotation Marks and Citations: 17 Real Examples
Punctuation with Quotation Marks and Citations: 17 Real Examples
Where does the period go: inside the quotation marks or outside? Before or after the citation? These questions come up in every academic paper. The examples below are real sentences that people sent to Proofread Bot, and the rules follow American usage, which APA, MLA, and Chicago all share.
The corrections below are written in formal, academic English.
1. Periods and commas go inside quotation marks
✓ Many dream images were characterized as "raw," "powerful," and "evocative."
✓ Some participants were skeptical: "I don't put any stock in these 'dream diaries.'"
In American English, periods and commas always go inside the closing quotation mark, even if they were not part of the original quotation. British English places them inside only when they belong to the quoted material.
2. Colons and semicolons go outside
✓ Participants stated that they were "excited to begin"; we controlled for expectations.
✓ Participants described their recall rate as "low to moderate"; at the end, they described it as "moderate to high."
3. Question marks depend on what is being asked
If the quotation itself is a question, the question mark goes inside. If the whole sentence is the question, it goes outside.
✓ How will this study affect participants who stated, "I never remember my dreams"?
✓ The questionnaire included "How often do you remember your dreams?" and "What do you most often dream about?"
✓ She kept asking, "Why me?"
Never add a second end mark after a question mark or exclamation point that ends a quotation.
4. Punctuation after a parenthetical citation
In APA and MLA style, the sentence's period goes after the citation, not before it.
✓ According to Foulkes's study, dreams may express profound aspects of personality (184).
✓ Is it possible that dreams express profound aspects of personality (Foulkes 184)?
✓ According to some, dreams express aspects of personality (Foulkes 184), though others disagree.
✓ Barris (2010) argued that dreams express "a relation to ourselves" (p. 4).
✓ "Everything's terrible anyhow" (Fitzgerald 17).
The last example shows a common double-punctuation error: the comma inside the quotation is not needed, because the citation and the final period end the sentence.
5. Abbreviations at the end of a sentence
✓ Please meet us at 10:00 a.m.
✓ Are we supposed to meet at 10:00 a.m.?
✓ Here is a direct example of immigrants living in the U.S.
If a sentence ends with an abbreviation that has a period, do not add a second period. A question mark or exclamation point, however, is still added.
6. Introducing a quotation
✓ She said, "To be or not to be."
✓ He said, "Do you want a cup of coffee?"
Introduce a quoted sentence with a comma and capitalize its first word. In academic writing, a colon is used when the introduction is itself a complete sentence: "Hamlet poses the central question: 'To be, or not to be.'"
Proofread Bot checks punctuation around quotation marks and citations and flags misplaced and doubled marks. For more on commas, see comma mistakes.