Question Marks and Quotation Marks

Some marks of punctuation depend on the context of the words as to whether they will go inside or outside the quotation marks.

The question mark is one such punctuation mark. When what is in the quotation marks is a question, the question mark will go inside the quotation marks. When the entire sentence is a question, not the quoted material by itself, the question mark goes outside the quotation marks.

Example: When we finally found Jackie, I asked, “Where have you been?”
Example: Why do many people prefer responding, “Just kidding”?

The exclamation mark is used in the same way as the question mark, as it also depends on the context of the sentence.

Example: “Hey!” I cried.
Example: I am so tired of these so-called “girls”!

As a final thought about common errors in punctuation usage, there is generally no need to use more than one punctuation mark at the same time. For example, when quoting a person, a comma generally comes before the end quotation mark when the name of the speaker follows. However, if other punctuation is used in this place, such as the question or exclamation mark, the comma is omitted.