Thanks, everyone. According to The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style: With other punctuation Put commas and periods inside closing quotation marks; put colons and semicolons outside. Other punctuation, such as exclamation

Jingtian, The New York Times style book says: periods and commas, in American usage, always go inside the closing quotation marks, regardless of grammatical logic. Another source gives this example: ...two complete thoughts joined by

. Neither is correct, actually, since both need a semicolon instead of a comma. After that correction, #1 is grammatically correct, while #2 would be OK for e-English: it is a sort of telegraph style. .

In reference to a discussion about martial arts forms, this statement was made. "Which hand is in front; I think it's the right." Is this improper use of a semicolon? Should the sentence have been separated into individual thoughts?

It should be used sparingly for stylistic purposes , that is, to introduce an emphatic, short sentence. Parenthetical elements of a sentence can be removed with the essential meaning of the sentence remaining. Appositives are always deemed as

Hi, this is an old question, but as it is the first google hit for this subject, here's a quick answer: However, if you look for an answer... If you look for a quick answer , however, look no further. Also there seems to be a new trend of

Hi, Clive, Firstly, I may sound slightly pedantic in that I always put forth stupid rules rather than being flexible and giving my own opinion on the matter. However, I do prefer conforming with the rules simply because I see innumerable

Hi, I see my name is appearing in this post, haha. I agree with Clive. A coordinating conjunction plus a semicolon seems unnecessary; however, on rare occasions, it is suitable (if there are internal commas). Semicolons are used in two

A coordinating conjunction cannot join two main clauses together with a comma. It needs to have a semicolon preceeding it or a full stop. Sorry, sometimes I write too fast for my own good; the marked out word should be conjunctive adverb.

Hello, I have a question. A.) Consider this statement below:- He played music on the Mp3 player in his car, ... , does it mean: 1.) that the MP3 player is newly purchased Or 2.) that the car is newly purchased It's ambiguous, but strictly, it