I’ve gotten a lot of emails recently about where to put periods and commas relative to quotation marks. The notes were prompted by a recent column in which I mentioned that, in American English, a ...

Quotation marks are used to set off a person's words, whether spoken or written. They are placed at both the beginning and end of the quote. Ex: Sue remarked, "I'll meet you at the movies," A comma is ...

Not long ago, I mentioned in this space that a period or comma always comes before a closing quotation mark. For example: Beth used the word “covert,” not the word “clandestine.” I mentioned, too, ...