Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Puncuation question

Is the puncuation in this next sentence correct?

Are you saying, "Hell no! Tokyo here we come,"?

Or, is this correct?

Are you saying, "Hell no! Tokyo here we come?"

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Put a dash, question mark, or exclamation point within closing quotation marks when the punctuation applies to the quotation itself and outside when it applies to the whole sentence.

Anonymous said...

None of the above! So, put the question mark outside the quotes, but drop the comma as it serves no purpose.
Are you saying, "Hell no! Tokyo here we come"?

Dean ASC said...

I'm pretty sure it's the second one.

Anonymous said...

first of all, if the entire sentence (including what is in the quotes) is a question, then you place the question mark outside the quotes. if the entire sentence is NOT a question, the question mark goes inside the quotes.

second of all, you'd damn well better keep the comma in there.

third, you might want to add a comma after tokyo, because it's kind of an interjection.

so:
Are you saying, "Hell no! Tokyo, here we come"?

unless you're just trying to say:
Are you saying, "Hell no"? Tokyo, here we come.

i don't know. what ARE you trying to say? god, why can't you just use good grammar??

Anonymous said...

I'm with Deano.

Dean ASC said...

Oh wait, I remembered this exact conversation from 2 months ago only with other people. Semicolons and some question marks don't go inside the quotation marks. So smarty pants is correct with neither. I am not entirely correct saying the second one. Adorable Girlfriend should stick to her plan of becoming someones trophy wife because it's clear following me around Grammar Land isn't going to get her squat.

Quotation marks are for sissys and semi-colons are for gypsys.

The only punctuation I ever need is my fist!

RicketyFunk said...

Nice Dean! Very nice.

I'm still uncertain, but I think I'll sitck with ther verdict of the prom rat.

I was proof reading the meeting agenda that our manager typed up (during our meeting) and was not quite sure how to handle that sentence.

English was probably my least favorite subject.