English 101
Pauline
Christiansen
QUOTATION MARKS |
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Remember
the following points when using quotation marks |
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1. |
A comma
or a period goes inside the
quotation marks, whether it is part of the question or not: Martha
said, “George, you’re a creep.” |
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NOT |
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Martha
said, “George, you’re a creep.”. |
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AND NOT |
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Martha
said, “George, you’re a creep”. |
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2. |
Question
marks, exclamation marks, dashes, colons, and semi-colons, go outside the quotation marks
when they are not part of the quoted material: |
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As a
candidate, he promised the voters, “peace, efficiency, integrity”; as
president, he gave the voters war, incompetence, and unprecedented dishonesty. |
3. |
You may
not alter in any form the material placed in quotation marks. This
means that an original statement which says “I am not a communist” cannot be
altered to “he was not a communist” and put in quotation marks in a sentence
like this: |
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He said
that “he was never a communist |
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Nor may
other personal pronouns be changed. The following sentence, for example, is
unlikely : |
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Don told
me he was going home.” To get his shootin” rifle.” |
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Probably
Don said “get my shootin’ rifle,” and the author of the sentence altered the
quotation by changing the pronoun. If he wanted to use quotation marks he
might better have written his sentence this way: |
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He told
me he was going home to get his “shootin’ rifle.” |
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Just as
you may not alter the words of a quotation, you should not alter its
emphasis. Sometimes you will want to emphasize one or two words of a
quotation for your own purposes; in such cases underline them, but add a note
indicating that the italics are yours, not your speaker’s: |
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The
official attitude toward the whole scandal is best seen
in a remark attributed to one unidentified staff member: “We have found the committee’s findings annoying,
but feel other matters more pressing (italics mine). “ The entire government
is shaken to its roots, and he terms the matter “annoying!” |
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You may also discover upon occasion that in
order to clarify a quotation you must add words of your own; place them in
brackets writing the quotation: |
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One
official observed, “We have found the committee’s findings [about misuse of
federal funds] startling, but we’re not sure just what to do about the
matter.” |
4. |
In
quotations within quotations reduce the inside set of quotation marks to
“single quotes” (typewritten as apostrophes). |
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The
defendant testified, “I have never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Grennan,
so I could not have suggested to him that ‘ the First National Bank would be
easy picking’ as he has charged,” |
5. |
When you
quote poetry or a prose statement in which it is important to indicate the
end of each line in the original, do so with a slash mark. |
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As Byron
once wrote, “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, / There is rapture on the lonely
shore, / There is society where none
intrudes, / By the deep Sea, and music in its roar.” |
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Note that
the capitalization of the original is retained. |