Friday, July 01, 2005

Question marks and quote marks

So my friend, Pedro, calls me today as I was recovering from mowing the lawn in the heat of the day. (I live in Florida and it's July, so this recovery is important.) My 7-year old, Patrick, runs outside with the cordless phone. "It's Pedro. He says it's an emergency."

Pedro does sound a bit panicked as I ask him, "What's up?" It's a punctuation issue, he tells me.

I get these calls quite a bit. All my friends know I'm a stickler, a geek, a punctuation princess. "Okay, what's the deal?" I inquire, switching to my editor mode (a much better mode than yard maintenance crew, believe me).

"We're doing the T-shirt for Challenge for the Children," he explains. This is a big project. A fundraiser with the support of a big name music group. He's been working on it for months. Years maybe. "And the type on the shirt says Are You Ready For The Challenge? We put quote marks around The Challenge. We're arguing about the question mark." And then he paused.

"Let me guess," I said. "Inside or outside, right?"

"Yes," he gasps in amazement. My friends are always amazed that I know what the question is before I even hear it.

That's because the questions are always the same. Grammar, style, usage questions are as old as time. Journalism schools have been grilling budding writers with the same usage exercises for generations because the problems never change. For the most part, the answers don't either. But sometimes they do. I'll post an entry on that, I promise.

So you can get a picture of the issue, Pedro is questioning two ways to punctuate his shirt:

  1. Are You Ready For "The Challenge?"
  2. Are You Ready For "The Challenge"?

"The rule is," I say as I go into reciting mode, "if the question mark does not pertain to the matter being quoted, it is OUTSIDE the quote marks. Since you're asking a question--Are you ready for the challenge?-- and The Challenge? (with a question mark) is NOT the name of your event, the quote mark is OUTSIDE. It does not pertain to what's being quoted."

Pedro is glad to hear this because he was right.

Then I throw him an option--and this is a good option, so you should remember it. "Why not putThe Challenge in italics?" I suggest. That way it's cleaner (less punctuation is always better, after all) and no one will be confused.

So it would look like this:

Are You Ready For The Challenge?

After all, quote marks are for things people SAY, not for phrases we want to stand out. (This is a pet peeve of mine and I audibly scream when people put cliches in quote marks.)

Pedro likes this idea, and he thanks me, hangs up and immediately hits the PRINT button for his final artwork to be delivered to the silk screener.

But what about other puncutation with quote marks? Easy.

There are two marks that ALWAYS go INSIDE quote marks:
  • periods
  • commas
That's it. And there are no exceptions to that rule. EVER.

It's just going to depend for other marks like:
  • question marks
  • exclamation points
That's when you have to stop and ask yourself what the mark pertains to. If it pertains to what's being quoted, it's INSIDE. If it's not, it's OUTSIDE. Like this:

Was the envelope marked "Confidential"?

See, here you have to visualize that ink stamp, and recall that it doesn't say CONFIDENTIAL? (Like it's up to whoever holds the envelope to decide whether they can read it or not.)

But, in this sentence, things are different:

The client asked, "Why hasn't the PC been repaired yet?"

See, the client asked a question, and you're quoting the client, so the question pertains to the matter being quoted. So it's inside for that question mark.

Here the sentence is a bit more complicated, but the rule helps you figure it out:

Why did Bob say, "You don't need to attend the meeting on employee morale"?

The speaker or writer of this sentence is asking something, but what he's asking about (the matter being quoted) is a statement, not a question. So the question mark does not pertain. Outside it goes.

This is one time the rules won't let you down, I promise. I can't say that for everything, and I will post about it very soon.

What are your questions? What trips you up when you write? Let me know and I'll address it in a future post.

Write on.