Place commas inside quotation marks

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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.

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