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Sep 9 2009   4:51PM GMT

Does a question mark go inside or outside of quotation marks?



Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
Business writing, CIO, punctuation, question marks, Quiz, quotation marks, quotation marks and punctuation

Which is correct?
The system administrator’s question was “Will the cost savings of a multi-user environment make up for the difficulty of deploying ____
a. it?”
b. it”?

Answer: a

Explanation:
According to AP style, a question mark is inside quotation marks if that part is the question and outside the quotation marks if the whole sentence is a question. (The same rule applies to exclamation marks and dashes. Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks.)

Grammarbook.com has more information about quotation marks and punctuation.

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