Periods and commas go inside closing quotation marks.
“Don’t compromise yourself,” said Janis Joplin. “You are all you’ve got.”
Exception
When you use parenthetical documentation with a short quotation, place the period after the parentheses with source information (32c, 33c).
In places, de Beauvoir “sees Marxists as believing in subjectivity” (Whitmarsh 63).
Colons, semicolons, and footnote numbers go outside closing quotation marks.
I felt only one emotion after reading “Eveline”: sorrow.
Everything is dark, and “a visionary light settles in her eyes”; this light is her salvation.
Tragedy is defined by Aristotle as “an imitation of an action that is serious and of a certain magnitude.”1
Question marks, exclamation points, and dashes all go inside closing quotation marks if they are part of the quotation, outside if they are not.
PART OF THE QUOTATION
The cashier asked, “Would you like to super-size that?”
“Jump!” one of the firefighters shouted.
NOT PART OF THE QUOTATION
What is the theme of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”?
“Break a leg”—that phrase is supposed to bring good luck to a performer.
For help using quotation marks in various documentation styles, see Chapters 32 (MLA), 33 (APA), 34 (Chicago), and 35 (CSE).