Multiple punctuation marks - Punctuation - Style

A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, Ninth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2018

Multiple punctuation marks
Punctuation
Style

The guidelines given throughout this chapter sometimes call for the use of two punctuation marks together—for example, a period and a closing parenthesis. The guidelines below show when to omit one of the marks and the order of the marks when both are used.

21.12.1 Omission of Punctuation Marks

Except for ellipses, never use two periods together, even when a period in an abbreviation ends a sentence. Keep the abbreviation period when a sentence ends with a question mark or an exclamation point.

The exchange occurred at 5:30 p.m.

Could anyone match the productivity of Rogers Inc.?

If a situation calls for both a comma and a stronger punctuation mark, such as a question mark or a dash, omit the comma.

“What were they thinking?” he wondered to himself.

While the senator couldn’t endorse the proposal—and he certainly had doubts about it—he didn’t condemn it.

An exception can be made for titles of works that end in a question mark or an exclamation point. Because such punctuation is not strictly related to the rest of the sentence, retain commas where needed.

“Are You a Doctor?,” the fifth story in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, treats modern love.

Films such as Airplane!, This Is Spinal Tap, and Austin Powers offer parodies of well-established genres.

21.12.2 Order of Punctuation Marks

Adjacent marks of punctuation most often occur with quotation marks, parentheses, or brackets. American usage follows a few reliable guidelines for ordering multiple marks.

21.12.2.1 WITH QUOTATION MARKS. A final comma or period nearly always precedes a closing quotation mark, whether it is part of the quoted matter or not.

In support of the effort “to bring justice to our people,” she joined the strike.

She made the argument in an article titled “On ’Managing Public Debt.’”

There are two exceptions. When single quotation marks are used to set off special terms in certain fields, such as linguistics, philosophy, and theology (see 21.10), put a period or comma after the closing quotation mark.

Some contemporary theologians, who favored ’religionless Christianity,’ were proclaiming the ’death of God’.

And if a computer file name or command must be put in quotation marks, a period or comma that is not part of the name or the command should come after the closing mark.

Click on Save As; name your file “appendix A, v. 10”.

Question marks and exclamation points precede a closing quotation mark if they are part of the quoted matter. They follow the quotation mark if they apply to the entire sentence in which the quotation appears.

Her poem is titled “What Did the Crow Know?”

Do we accept Jefferson’s concept of “a natural aristocracy”?

Semicolons and colons always follow quotation marks. If the quotation ends with a semicolon or a colon, change it to a period or a comma (or delete it) to fit the structure of the main sentence (see 25.3.1).

He claimed that “every choice reflects an attitude toward Everyman”; his speech then enlarged on the point in a telling way.

The Emergency Center is “almost its own city”: it has its own services and governance.

21.12.2.2 WITH PARENTHESES AND BRACKETS. When you enclose a complete sentence in parentheses, put the terminal period (or other terminal punctuation mark) for that sentence before the last parenthesis. However, put the period outside when material in parentheses, even a grammatically complete sentence, is included within another sentence. The same principles apply to material in brackets.

We have noted similar motifs in Japan. (They can also be found in Korean folktales.)

Use periods in all these situations (your readers will expect them).

Myths have been accepted as allegorically true (by the Stoics) and as priestly lies (by Enlightenment thinkers).

(The director promised completion “on time and under budget” [italics mine].)

For terminal punctuation with citations given parenthetically, see 25.2.


1. There is a second type of dash, called an en dash (because it is approximately the width of the capital letter N), that is used in published works to mean “through,” usually in connection with numbers or dates (e.g., 1998—2008). It can also be used in other contexts, as discussed in 6.78—84 of The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition (2017). If your local guidelines require it, this character is available in most word processors; otherwise use a hyphen in these contexts. Note that this book uses en dashes where they are appropriate, as in the preceding reference to CMOS.