Section 15.9 Quotation Marks
Quotation marks flag a special relationship between a piece of language and the text that contains it. You saw in Chapter 14 that English can embed speech both as a that-clause (She said that she would come, an indirect quotation with no quotation marks) and as a direct quotation (She said, "I will come", where the original words are preserved). The choice between direct and indirect quotation changes the grammar of the sentence, and quotation marks are the written marker of the direct form.
Direct Quotations.
Enclose the exact words of a speaker or writer:
-
She said, "I’ll be there."
-
"I’ll be there," she said.
-
"I’ll be there," she said, "as soon as I can." (interrupted quotation)
Integrating Quotations Grammatically.
When you incorporate a quotation into your own sentence, the result must be grammatically complete. There are three common patterns:
-
Signal phrase + comma + quotation: She said, "The results are clear."
-
Full sentence + colon + quotation: The professor made her position clear: "We will not accept late submissions."
-
Quotation integrated into sentence grammar: He called the results "unprecedented" and "groundbreaking." (no comma—the quote is part of the sentence’s structure)
Titles.
Use quotation marks for titles of shorter works (articles, chapters, poems, songs, episodes):
-
I read "The Road Not Taken."
Use italics for titles of longer works (books, journals, films, albums).
Punctuation with Quotation Marks.
American convention: Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks:
-
She said, "I agree."
-
He called it "amazing," but I disagreed.
British convention: Periods and commas may go outside if not part of the quotation.
Question marks and exclamation points depend on whether they belong to the quotation or the containing sentence:
-
Did she say "yes"? (the question is mine)
-
She asked, "Are you coming?" (the question is hers)
Punctuation with Citations.
In academic writing, parenthetical citations follow the closing quotation mark, and the period follows the citation:
-
She argues that "grammar is a system, not a set of rules" (Smith 42).
For block quotations (indented, no quotation marks), the citation follows the final period:
-
Grammar is not a set of arbitrary rules imposed from above. It is the systematic structure that native speakers internalize through exposure and use. (Smith 42)
