Quick Quote within Dialogue Question

[BWFoster78]

In American English (b/c British English, according to my research, is much different), which is correct:

A. "Brant calls it your ‘fiery death blast’.”

OR

B. "Brant calls it your ‘fiery death blast.'”

Thanks.

Brian

 

[Noma Galway]

(B), I believe.

 

[AnneL]

B is correct.

 

[AnneL]

A is correct for British English, except of course it would be double quotes inside single quotes instead of the other way around.

 

[Noma Galway]

B is correct.

Yes, I edited after I looked. I probably need to go through my manuscript and fix these instances, then.

 

[BWFoster78]

A is correct for British English, except of course it would be double quotes inside single quotes instead of the other way around.

Anne,

Seems like B is the way I was always taught, but I recall some rule I read somewhere that stated something like, "If the quote at the end of dialogue contains a punctuation mark, put the single quotation mark outside the mark. Otherwise, put it inside." Have you ever heard that? (Did I make it up or misremember it?)

Thanks.

Brian

 

[AnneL]

Periods always go inside all quotation marks in American English. With question marks and exclamation points, it depends on if that's part of the quote within the quote or not. I tried to think of some example and only succeeded in muddling myself.

 

[Steerpike]

I'll chime in and say 'B' as well. My understanding of the American rule is that the punctuation always goes inside, even if there are two sets of quotation marks.

 

[AnneL]

You could get something like, "Did I hear her say 'Ouch!'?"
Which is correct but looks so weird it should probably be revised.

 

[BWFoster78]

Periods always go inside all quotation marks in American English. With question marks and exclamation points, it depends on if that's part of the quote within the quote or not. I tried to think of some example and only succeeded in muddling myself.

That helps a bunch. Thanks!

 

[Steerpike]

You could get something like, "Did I hear her say 'Ouch!"?"
Which is correct but looks so weird it should probably be revised.

I believe in that case, you only use one of the ! or ? marks, and it is supposed to be the dominant mark that wins out. In this case, I'd use the question mark and leave the exclamation mark out.

 

[AnneL]

OK, I just pulled out my Chicago style manual to resolve this: Rule 6.123: "Neither a period (aside from an abbreviating period) nor a comma ever accompanies a question mark or an exclamation point. The latter two marks, being stronger, take precedence over the first two. If a question mark and an exclamation point are both called for, only the mark more appropriate to the context should be retained:

What did she mean when she said, "The foot now wears a different shoe"?
Who shouted, "Up the establishment!"
[Now closing Chicago quotation.]

So that rule would make Steerpike right in the case of conflicting exclamation points and question marks, at least under Chicago style. However, I maintain that if you wind up with such a conflict, it's probably a crappy sentence and should be revised. Exclamation points should usually be killed anyway.

(Obviously I am procrastinating, better say, "Bye-bye.")

 

[Caged Maiden]

Wow... I could have sword "A" was correct. Well... I looked it up in :

Grammar and Punctuation | The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation

and found in fact, "B" is the right way, weird as it looks to me. Thanks for this opportunity to share my grammar book with the scribes. I put it into the Resources forum since it is a great help.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Ok, while we're on the subject of curious quotations and punctuations, let me toss this head-scratcher out to the peanut gallery. It's been bugging me for days and I don't know how to properly punctuate it.

The stairs let out onto the main floor and at last she had space to wedge her wide hips in between the lollygaggers with a few rapid fire, “’scuse me’s” and make a better pace through the main hallway.

I put the problem area in bold. Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[AnneL]

drop comma after rapid and italicize instead of quotemarks?

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I'd probably rewrite to something like this....

The stairs let out onto the main floor. At last she had space to wedge her wide hips in between the lollygaggers, with a few rapid fire "scuse me's", and make a better pace through the main hallway.

Separating off the troublesome bit, seems to clarify that it's different from the rest of the sentence while not jarring to the reader, at least to me.

 

[Caged Maiden]

I concur. I think that's the way to do it.

However, I'm glad to see you stick with a weird sentence structure. There could be an equally good argument for breaking it into two sentences and doing away with anything resembling a problem. That, however, is boring writing. So, I like how you wrote this and I think that little fix with the commas, is the solution.

I'm a fan of commas. I've red a lot of books that were missing commas and to me, it reads weird. Does anyone know why we're abandoning the comma? Is this an effort agents support? For me as a reader and a writer, I want the correct message to be quite clear, because I often use unorthodox sentences. But without commas... I'm kinda doomed.

"A group of girls giggled by one of the fires, swaying along with the adults, while boys roughhoused, darting in and around the tent holding the banquet tables." I know I could have broken it into two sentences, but they were related, so I used commas. I might have a comma abuse problem.