Writing for Business - A Whatis.com Blog » question marks http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/writing-for-business Is your grammar as good as your code? Thu, 23 May 2013 20:41:07 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Does a question mark go inside or outside of quotation marks? http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/writing-for-business/does-a-question-mark-go-inside-or-outside-of-quotation-marks/ http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/writing-for-business/does-a-question-mark-go-inside-or-outside-of-quotation-marks/#comments Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:51:38 +0000 Ivy Wigmore http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/writing-for-business/does-a-question-mark-go-inside-or-outside-of-quotation-marks/ 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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