Punctuation Rules

With the various types of punctuation, there should be some hard-and-fast rules for their usage, right? Well, there are. The problem that people have generally lies in either they don’t know the rules or they confuse American rules with British rules.

When in a quote, the period and the comma always go inside the quotation marks. They never go outside of the quotation marks because they can be easily lost and mistaken for printing errors.

Example: “I am going to the mall tonight.”

Not: “I am going to the mall tonight”.

Example: “Bob,” she said, “We need to be quiet in the library.”

Not: “Bob”, she said, “We need to be quiet in the library”.