Puntuation marks next to commas.

Question

If I use brackets in a sentence and a puntuation mark is required after them, do I place the said punctuation mark, e.g. a comma, after or before the close bracket?

Many thanks in advance.

PS. Could you also correct my punctuation in the above sentence.

Mr Wordy · Accepted Answer

If the punctuation logically belongs to the bracketed part (alone) then put it inside the brackets. Otherwise, put it outside the brackets.

I can't think of any situation when a trailing comma would be placed inside a closing bracket. This is because the part in brackets is a self-contained statement, and a self-contained statement never ends in a comma.

A full stop, question mark or exclamation mark should be placed inside the closing bracket if a whole sentence is bracketed. A question mark or exclamation mark should be placed inside a bracketed clause in a larger sentence if it applies only to the bracketed part.

Examples:

"A sentence talking about one thing (with a bracketed part), then another thing (with a bracketed part), and so on."

"A sentence. (A sentence in brackets.) Another sentence (with a bracketed part)."

"A sentence. (A funny sentence in brackets!) A funny sentence (with a bracketed part)!"

"A sentence (this bit is funny!) and the continuation of the sentence."

The punctuation in your question looks fine to me. There is one typo ("puntuation" for "punctuation"), and I would say "closing bracket" rather than "close bracket".

Ellycat · Answer

EllycatIf I use quotation marks in a sentence and a punctuation mark is required next to them, do I place the said punctuation mark, e.g. a question mark, before of after the quotation mark? And I would also like to know whether or not fullstops come before or after the quotation mark.

Ellycat · Answer

Thanks, Mr Wordy. As you can see I got a tad confused with my questions. It is actually the second question that was baffling me, but as you can see I have pasted a couple of examples that are pertinent to the aforementioned question about punctuation marks appearing before or after the closed quotation mark.

My apologies for the mix up.

Mr Wordy · Answer

EllycatIf I use quotation marks in a sentence and a punctuation mark is required next to them, do I place the said punctuation mark, e.g. a question mark, before of after the quotation mark? And I would also like to know whether or not fullstops come before or after the quotation mark.

This is a much asked question with a complicated answer. If you search Google for "punctuation inside or outside quotation marks" (without quotes), or some such similar thing, then you'll find lots of material. Here are a couple of examples:

http://www.writersblock.ca/tips/monthtip/tipmay96.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Punctuation

If you have any questions that are unresolved by the material available on these various websites then post back.

Ellycat · Answer

If you are quoting a question then the ? will go within the quotation marks.
I.e. Sally said, "Where are you going?"

If you're asking a question about a quote, then the ? will go after the quotation marks.
I.e. Did Sally say, "We are going to the zoo"?

There is no double punctuation used.
For periods, if the quotation marks enclose a sentence, it goes inside. If the quotation marks do not use a period, the period goes outside.
I.e. --- The boy said "I am going to the store."
But --- The show was was titled "My Town".

Yes, Mr Wordy, these examples explain exactly what I was searching for. I'm presuming that a 'period' is the U.S.English term for a full stop.

Mr Wordy · Answer

EllycatI'm presuming that a 'period' is the U.S.English term for a full stop.

Correct.

Puntuation marks next to commas.

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