Punctuation Department · Today with The Mayor

Quotation Marks

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Quotation Marks

The Mayor teaches this column himself. Work through each capitalization job below, then take the quiz.

Quote the exact words

Quotation marks enclose the exact words a speaker says (a direct quotation). A speaker tag (she said, asked Diego) sits outside the marks; Chief Comma sets it off with a comma. In American English, the comma and period go inside the closing quotation mark.

In a sentence

Maria said, “Let's go.”

“Wait for me,” Theo called.

Now you try

Put the marks around the exact words; the speaker tag (she said) stays outside. You could try a question or a shout.

Mark the title of a short work

Quotation marks enclose the title of a short work: a poem, a song, a short story, or an article. Longer works (books, movies, albums) are set in italics or underlined instead of quoted.

In a sentence

We read “The Bat-Poet” in class.

Now you try

A short work takes quotation marks; a longer work, like a book or movie, takes italics.

Always a pair

Quotation marks enclose the exact words in a quotation, whether those words are spoken (dialogue), quoted from a text, or the title of a short work. They always come as a pair, open and close.

In a sentence

Diego asked, “Are you ready?”

We read “Fog” aloud.

Now you try

Spoken words, words from a page, or a short work's title: all get a pair of marks.