8.03 Punctuation and grammar in run-in quotations

(a) Place commas and periods within closing quotation marks, whether or not they were included in the original material:

• Original

  Literature’s world is a concrete human world of immediate experience. The poet uses images and objects and sensations much more than he uses abstract ideas; the novelist is concerned with telling stories, not with working out arguments.

• Run-in quotation

  "Literature’s world is a concrete human world of immediate experience," according to Northrop Frye. "The poet uses images and objects and sensations much more than he uses abstract ideas; the novelist is concerned with telling stories, not with working out arguments."

(b) However, when a very high degree of accuracy is required (as in a legal context), it may be desirable to place any punctuation not part of the original document outside the quotation marks:

• This part of section 2 reads as follows: "real and personal property of every description and deeds and instruments relating to or evidencing the title or right to property".

(c) Place a closing dash, question mark or exclamation mark inside the closing quotation marks if it applies to the quoted material and outside if it applies to the entire sentence:

• If I hear one more word about "political correctness"—
  Stop telling me to "relax"!
  All she kept saying during the trip was "Are we there yet?"

(d) Note that when a statement or question ends with a quotation that is itself a question or exclamation, no period, exclamation mark or question mark is required after the closing quotation marks:

• Isn’t it time we stopped asking "How much does it cost?"

(e) A closing semicolon or colon should normally be dropped and replaced with a period, a comma or ellipsis points.

(f) When introducing a quotation with the word that, do not use a comma or a colon. Quotations that follow annunciatory clauses ending in that also require grammatical changes—from first-person to third-person pronouns, possessive adjectives and verbs. Neither the third-person pronoun nor that is ever enclosed in quotation marks or square brackets:

• Original

  I want to consider one sort of semantic change, the kind of generalization that has affected literally and hundreds of other words. It has been occurring for a long time, often draining meaning until no echo of the word’s roots remains, and I suspect that it is occurring more rapidly in this age of electronic communication. I want to consider it from a particular point of view—as a usage problem, but also as an aspect of what Edward Sapir, more than seventy years ago, described as "drift."
  —Robert Gorrell, "Language Change, Usage and Drift," English Today

• Restructured version

  Gorrell discusses one sort of semantic change, the kind of generalization that has affected literally and hundreds of other words. This semantic change has been occurring for a long time, he believes, and he suspects that "it is occurring more rapidly in this age of electronic communication." In this work, he "[considers] it from a particular point of view—as a usage problem, but also as an aspect of . . . ‘drift.’"

Note that if several changes of this kind need to be made within the same quotation, the material should be presented entirely in indirect speech (see 8.04 Indirect (reported) speech). For information on how to use ellipsis points to indicate omissions from quoted passages, see 8.09 Omissions.

(g) In-text notes, that is, author and page number references following a run-in quotation and enclosed in parentheses, should be placed between the closing quotation marks and the required final punctuation:

• Recently researchers have examined the sociological aspects of tourism and people’s travel habits in the past century: "Scholars have attempted to deconstruct tourism by asking why sites and practices become designated as culturally desirable to ‘do,’ (such as Niagara Falls, the Canadian Rockies, Peggy’s Cove or the West Edmonton Mall), and others (there are plenty of waterfalls, mountains, fishing villages and shopping malls in the world) do not" (Dubinsky 1986).

For further information on in-text notes, see 9.25 In-text notes.

(h) When quoting poetry in running text, use a slash (/) to indicate the end of a line:

• "Language, the fist/proclaims by squeezing/is for the weak only," says Margaret Atwood in Power Politics.

For further information on the use of a comma or colon before opening quotation marks, see 7.18 Quotations, etc. and 7.26 Annunciatory function.

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