Place commas inside quotation marks

One punctuation matter that might keep you up at night is where to place a comma when appearing with quotation marks. Well, you can quote me on this: Commas appear inside quotation marks, according to the book “Use the Right Word,” and other sources.

The British, however, place the comma outside of the quotation mark. But they also drive down the left side of the road.

This American “peculiarity” soon may be put to rest, though. Many websites place the comma outside of the quotation mark so that the comma doesn’t become part of a link (The title of a book probably is linked to its Amazon.com page.); having a comma as part of the link looks a little untidy, after all. In fact, in my print books, I place the comma inside but on my websites the comma always goes outside.

Given this, don’t be surprised if in a quarter century or so we revise this rule for print. For the moment, though, tuck that comma inside the quotation mark and sleep tight.

______________________

My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 350 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.

Check out some of my self-publishing guidebooks: