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Punctuation when quoting

8 replies

Albrecht · 02/02/2010 17:17

Ok I should know this but getting all confused from writing in html / pregnancy brain.

Is it:

File was labelled, "this is unfinished".

OR

File was labelled, "this is unfinished."

Please help.

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cornsilk · 02/02/2010 17:24

2nd one

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cornsilk · 02/02/2010 17:25

shouldn't it have a capital letter though?

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paisleyleaf · 02/02/2010 17:25

Oh, I thought it was the first.

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cornsilk · 02/02/2010 17:28

deffo not first

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MmeLindt · 02/02/2010 17:28

Can I jump on the bandwagon and ask about commas when quoting, I am never sure.

And do you use 'these' or "these"?

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AMumInScotland · 02/02/2010 17:28

I'd say whatever is inside the quotation marks ought to be exactly what it says on the label of the file. That might or might have a capital letter or a full stop. And there ought to be a fullstop outside the quotation marks as well, for the actual sentence.

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Albrecht · 02/02/2010 17:37

Thanks for the opinions everyone - glad to see I'm not the only one on this!

AMumInScotland, I'm with you on quoting exactly what has been written but does that mean you could have

File was labelled, "this is unfinished.".

MmeLindt, I tend to use ' instead of underlining for titles of things and " for quoting. Don't think this is a rule however, just what I do for clarity for myself.

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traumaqueen · 02/02/2010 17:46

Whatever you are quoting goes in the quotes.

The rest is a complete sentence.

So if the file you are writing about was labelled

this is unfinished

then: The file was labelled "this is unfinished".

If it was labelled

this is unfinished.

then The file was labelled "this is unfinished.". to be technically completely correct but it does look a bit silly.

IMHO.