Question from Miss Mae, Forum member (April 14, 2011):Dear Mr. Carillo,
I keep forgetting to ask you about where to place commas after a quote. I already understand where should it be when used to mark statements, but I'm not sure where to place them if they were not intended to introduce a quote. Sigh! I wish I could explain my query further, but I'm afraid I would just confuse you more. Please just take a look at this sentence: If I don’t “wake up,” I wouldn't have to bear with those. Should the punctuation mark be placed before the quotation mark or after it? But it is not really a statement…
Respectfully,
Miss Mae
My reply to Miss Mae:To clearly understand how to handle quoted material in English, let’s take a close look at the sentence you presented:
If I don’t “wake up,” I wouldn’t have to bear with those.
The words you placed inside quotation marks in that sentence, “wake up,” is what’s called a drop quote or orphan quote. A drop quote or an orphan quote usually consists of one or a few words that the writer decides to enclose within quotation marks for any of these reasons:
(1) It’s an indication that the writer means something else other than the usual denotation of the word or phrase being used in that sentence; in other words, the writer intends a figurative rather than a literal meaning to that word or phrase. In the sentence you presented, for instance, the negative sense of the drop quote “wake up” may mean “not regaining consciousness” or “dying” after, say, a delicate surgical operation. In this case, that sentence can literally be stated as follows: “If I die, I wouldn’t have to bear with those.”
(2) It’s a quick summation in a few words of an idea, as in the drop quote “a wakeup call” in the sentence, “The sharp drop in his popularity rating was ‘a wakeup call’ for the politician to make himself more publicly visible.”
(3) It’s a capsule description in a few words of a concept, as in using the drop quote to describe a certain still unproven body of knowledge being presented in a dissertation, as in this sentence: “Critics disparagingly called the young cleric’s paper that attempted to rebut Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection as the “Theory of Unnatural Evolution.”
Now, your question is: Considering that the drop quote is not really a complete statement, should the punctuation mark (the comma in this case) be placed before the closing quotation mark before or after it?
There are actually two prevailing styles with respect to the placement of the punctuation mark for drop quotes and for most quoted material for that matter. The first is the American English style, which is to place the punctuation (the comma in this case) inside the closing quotation mark, as was done in your example:
If I don’t “wake up,” I wouldn’t have to bear with those.
If the drop quote is found at the end of the sentence, the period will be placed inside the closing quotation mark, as follows:
I wouldn’t have to bear with those if I don’t “wake up.”
In British English, however, that comma is placed outside the closing quotation mark, as follows:
If I don’t “wake up”, I wouldn’t have to bear with those.
If the drop quote is found at the end of the sentence, the period will be placed outside the closing quotation mark, as follows:
I wouldn’t have to bear with those if I don’t “wake up”.
You’ll find a lively and instructive general discussion of the use of quotation marks by clicking this link to the
Capital Community College’s Guide to Grammar and Writing. The important thing is to be clearly aware of whether you are using American English or British English, as there are distinct differences in how each of them handles not only punctuation but the kind of quotation marks used.
RELATED READING:Lesson #13 – Dealing with Quotations and Attributions
