Quotation Marks with In-Text (Parenthetical) Citations

Quotation Marks with In-Text (Parenthetical) Citations

Punctuations of Quotations: Pay Attention to the Period

In all academic writing, Quotations must have appropriate punctuation.

In order to determine how to punctuate the phrase that comes before a quotation, you need to know whether the phase is an independent clause.  Here, you have three options:

1. When the quotation ends the sentence and there is no citation, place the period inside the quotation marks.

• Scott informed Zelda, “You must stop jumping into fountains.”

2. If the quotation comes at the end of the sentence and then there is a parenthetical citation, place the period to the right of the citation.

• In his famous speech “The Ballot or the Bullet,” Malcolm X observes, “The government has failed us. You can’t deny that” (45).

• She knows she is no longer safe, saying, “I feared for my Safety in this wicked House” (28).

• Macbeth says, “Life’s but a walking shadow” (5.5.24).

• Interestingly, Malcolm X distrusted both white conservatives and liberals and “never voted for either political party” (Guzman).

Adapted from "Quotation Marks with In-Text (Parenthetical) Citations" by Lumen Learning, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).