Quote marks and formatting question

In My Humble Opinion
1

How do you correctly punctuate a sentence where a question is being asked (so the sentence needs a question mark at the end), but the end of the sentence consists of a quote, which in itself is not a question?

For example, how would you punctuate this:

What do you think of the advert where the bear says, ‘It’s the creamiest chocolate around.’?

Is it…

What do you think of the advert where the bear says, ‘It’s the creamiest chocolate around?’ (Doesn’t seem right to me, because the quote is not a question)

Or is it…

What do you think of the advert where the bear says, ‘It’s the creamiest chocolate around’? (Which also doesn’t seem right, because the quote needs punctuation within itself)

2

The second way is right. You could use a period if you think the quote needs punctuation, but if the slogan doesn’t have a period after it then you don’t need it.

3

I thought that way looked the least wrong, cheers!

4

The question mark goes within the quote when it’s part of the quote and outside it if it’s not part of the quote. There is no need for other punctuation:

Thus, the winning entry is:
What do you think of the advert where the bear says, ‘It’s the creamiest chocolate around’?

#1 is wrong because you don’t need the period.
#2 is wrong because the bear does not ask the question; you do.

5

Chuck is right.

6

Seconded.

7

There is no right or wrong in this case.

When I was a kid I learned “periods” and “commas” always go inside quotes. All other punctuation goes outside.

Most older people in the USA follow this.

The NY Times and the Chicago Tribune each have their own standard for puntuation.

You will note in the US we use double quote marks " while other places use single ’ marks

It doesn’t matter HOW you do it, the important thing is whatever way you choose, make sure that that way is consistant throughout your writings.

8

Some things vary more than others. In the United States, the tradition is to have periods (or full stops) inside quotation marks (or inverted commas), for reasons that have more to with old-style hand typesetting and tradition than anything else. However, other situations are a bit more clear. All other punctuation (including full stops and commas outside the U.S.) follows the rule that if the punctuation belongs to the quote, it goes inside, and it goes outside otherwise. Which makes sense. Exceptions to the general rule are rare and tend to deal with legal documents and things like that.

The little trick to this is that if there is a full sentence in the quote, you might believe that you need two marks, one to end the quotation, and another to end the sentence it’s embedded in. This is usually frowned upon. You usually will see two periods reduced to one (which would go outside the quote, except in the U.S.), a period and a question mark or a period with an exclamation point reduced to a question mark (placed according to the rules. A question mark and an exclamation point are the exceptions, you would probably use both, or you could get rid of the exclamation point since it’s easily done away with. Some examples:

U.S.
She called me and said, “I’ll be a bit late.”
She called me and said, “I’ll be a bit late,” and then she hung up.

Elsewhere
She called me and said, ‘I’ll be a bit late’.
She called me and said, ‘I’ll be a bit late’, and then she hung up.

More or less everywhere (except for “ ” vs. ‘ ’)
I think she said, “When will you be there?”
Did she say, “We’ll be there at eight”?
I think she said, “I can’t wait to see you!”
I can’t believe she said, “I can’t find my keys”!

U.S.
Did she say, “We’ll be there at nine?” or did she say, “We’ll be there at five?”
She either said, “I can’t wait to see you!” or she said, “I don’t want to see you!”
(No comma after the end of the first quotation)

Elsewhere
Did she say, ‘We’ll be there at nine?’, or did she say, ‘We’ll be there at five?”
She either said, ‘I can’t wait to see you!’, or she said, ‘I don’t want to see you!’

More or less everywhere (except for “ ” vs. ‘ ’)
Did she say, “I can’t wait to see you!”?
I can’t believe she said, “Are you going to wear that?”!
(Losing the exclamation point and following the general rule would work here, too.)

And so, with my incredible ability to write convincing dialogue well on display, you would probably want to write,

What do you think of the advert where the bear says, ‘It’s the creamiest chocolate around’?

9

I agree with most of what you said in this post, but I think you got these examples wrong.

The statements inside the quotes are not questions, and therefore shouldn’t have question marks inside them. The overall sentence is a question, so it gets a single question mark outside the quote. I.e.:

Did she say, “We’ll be there at nine,” or did she say, “We’ll be there at five”?

10

I knew I was going to make some sort of mistake. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.

Commasense, you are correct. Change those examples to:

I can’t tell if she said, “Does it start at nine?” or if she said “Does it end at nine?”
I can’t tell if she said, ‘Does it start at nine?’, or if she said, ‘Does it end at nine?”

11

Would that be, “I knew it. I knew it. I knew it”?

12
  1. Can you provide some background on this?
  2. Why are we still continuing this tradition? It seems a bit illogical
13

IMHO, the reason for it is aesthetic, regardless if it originated in the days of hand-set type. (Several sites claim that the small period or comma letterforms were easily knocked out of place or damaged if not followed by the quotation mark. This doesn’t explain why it wasn’t a problem in Britain.)

For me, the little period “feels” more at home nestled up next to the end of a word than it does hanging out all alone outside the quotation marks. Since it is normally placed next to the word, one might claim that it’s more likely to be missed if it is outside the quotes, thus reducing readability.

But it’s mostly just a matter of what one is used to and considers “natural.” And as long as the text in question is being read by a human and not a computer, it is purely a matter of style, and logic doesn’t enter into it.

So even though the “inside the quotes” style was an unquestioned and nearly universal practice for centuries in the U.S., since we are all typesetters now, and many of us are also coders and think those practices should carry through to our writing, and since one of the most influential reference works in the world has established “outside the quotes” as its style, the long established American practice is probably on its way out.

But it still looks better to me.

14

I completely agree (and agree with RealityChuck as well). I think it completely changes the meaning.

What do you think of the advert where the bear says, "It’s the creamiest chocolate around?"
I guess you could say that this sentence doesn’t suggest the bear asking a question because it says “says” rather than “asks”. But the question mark being inside the quotes, logically, implies (to me) that the bear is wondering if the chocolate is or is not the creamiest.

**What do you think of the advert where the bear says, “It’s the creamiest chocolate around”? **
This just makes more sense to me compared to the other.

15

What I had always heard is that back in the days of hand-set movable type, typesetters were too easily losing periods and commas because the type pieces for . and , are skinny. So, they would cram them inside the ” pieces which were wider. As you can see, this doesn’t seem to be all that great a reason, and it doesn’t seem to have been followed everywhere. I think what really happened is that someone somewhere, probably in the U.S., decided to do it this way, perhaps for aesthetic reasons, and then for some reason it stuck, like how changing ou to o in certain words is more common on the west side of the pond, and so on. I would look up some more info on this, but right now, I’m supposed to be dissertating.

The tradition of always putting periods and commas inside quotation marks lives on because it is well settled, because it absolves you from having to decide “inside or outside” in what are by far the most common cases, because it (arguably) looks better,* and because it really doesn’t matter all that much and most people won’t notice.†

  • I think it does, but others probably don’t.
    † For what its worth, footnote markers go after punctuation, except in weird cases like dashes and the like.
16

While I agree with most of what you said, as a UK-based copy editor I would punctuate both of these examples as you did in the US versions. “I’ll be a bit late” is a complete sentence, and so the full stop (or comma in the second example) belongs inside the quote marks.

However, if the quote wasn’t a full sentence, then UK style would be to have the full stop outside the quote marks:

She said that the food was “appallingly tasteless”.

Having described the food as “appallingly tasteless”, she left without paying.

Note also that where the quote is a sentence fragment, there is no comma (or colon, depending on house style) introducing it.

She said that the food was “appallingly tasteless”.

She said: “I thought the food was appallingly tasteless.”

17

I can see how the fact that “I’ll be a bit late” is a complete sentence could be used to justify that the period comes inside the quotation marks when it is at the end of a statement, e.g.
She called me and said “I’ll be a bit late.”
but I don’t see how the fact that “I’ll be a bit late” is a complete sentence is of any relevance when it is in the middle of a statement, e.g.
She called me and said “I’ll be a bit late,” and then she hung up.
Why would a complete sentence end in a comma?

If I were to make the rules, the rules would say that the above holds for all punctuation, with no exceptions for periods and commas.