full stops after question marks if outside a quote? (2025)

Although it leaves us with a little collection of punctuation marks all together, if I had to I'd be inclined to include the full stop. The question mark marks the end of the quoted sentence, not the end of the sentence in which it is quoted.

Having said that, I think the correct solution is simply to use a colon instead of a comma after "he replied" thus making the full stop unnecessary

Punctuation guides suggest that one sentence terminator is enough. If the quotation at the end of a sentence includes one, no additional terminator is required.
From the US Government Printing Office guide:

The trainman shouted, “All aboard!”
Who asked, “Why?”
​

From HERE.

panjandrum said:

Punctuation guides suggest that one sentence terminator is enough. If the quotation at the end of a sentence includes one, no additional terminator is required.
From the US Government Printing Office guide:

The trainman shouted, “All aboard!”
Who asked, “Why?”
​

From HERE.

If a statement ends in a quoted question, allow the question mark within the quotation marks suffice to end the sentence.

• Malcolm X had the courage to ask the younger generation of American blacks, "What did we do, who preceded you?"

Click to expand...

And yet... these all look incomplete to me and I would put full stops after the closing inverted commas in every case. Then again, US English has rather different punctuation rules to British English in respect to quotations.

Matching Mole said:

And yet... these all look incomplete to me and I would put full stops after the closing inverted commas in every case. Then again, US English has rather different punctuation rules to British English in respect to quotations.

Click to expand...

But you wouldn't put two full stops at the end of a sentence that ended with a quoted complete sentence, would you?
Billy yelled to the assembled crowd "The end of the world is nigh.".

The Economist:

If a complete sentence in quotes comes at the end of a larger sentence, the final stop should be inside the inverted commas.

While Mr. Mole is correct in noting that AE and BE usage often differs, one good BE site
follows, or precedes, panjandrum's suggestions:

The chief use of quotation marks is quite easy to understand: a pair of quotation marks encloses a direct quotation — that is, a repetition of someone's exact words. Here are some examples:

President Kennedy famously exclaimed "Ich bin ein Berliner!"

Madonna is fond of declaring "I'm not ashamed of anything."

"The only emperor", writes Wallace Stevens, "is the emperor of ice cream."

Click to expand...

Guide to Punctuation, Larry Trask, University of Sussex
http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/department/docs/punctuation/node00.html

Whether US, UK, CAN, AUS, or what have you, a period/full-stop is not required after a question mark. It acts as the terminating puncuation.

Direct quotes take full-stops before the final apostrophes. The rule for things like titles, however, differe between the UK and the U.S.

U.K.: Julie loved 'Gone with the Wind'.

U.S.: Julie loved "Gone with the Wind."

Canada: Both are correct. The rule being pick one and stick to it within the same body of work. I prefer the UK version as the US version (to me) makes it seem like the period/full-stop is part of the title.

x

panjandrum said:

But you wouldn't put two full stops at the end of a sentence that ended with a quoted complete sentence, would you?
Billy yelled to the assembled crowd "The end of the world is nigh.".

Click to expand...

No I wouldn't, I would omit the full stop inside the quotes. The difference, though, is that the examples I was referring to had termination points that do not apply to the sentence as a whole (i.e. the sentences containing the quotes were neither questions nor exclamations), so, to me, the main sentence did not have an appropriate termination.

This, I admit, prompts the question: What if the main sentence was a question quoting a question or an exclamation, likewise? E.g.:

Did you really say: "Do have any idea what you are talking about?"?Well, I just hope I never have to write a sentence like that. I'll let you know if it happens.

As for Larry Trask, I can't account for his opinions. He is famously antipathetic towards pop music.

For British (and Irish!) English usage, where does the punctuation go in the following sentences:

My father said to me 'Turn that tap off and stop wasting water' 'But I'm thirsty' I replied.

and

'Turn that tap off and stop wasting water' he said.

I deliberately haven't put in anything other than the quotation marks. Can anyone recommend a good (preferably online) style guide for British English usage (not the Guardian thanks!)?

From the sticky thread at the top of this forum:
Punctuation
UK English, University of Sussex:
http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/...on/node00.html

US English, Capital Community College Foundation:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/marks.htm

US English, the Owl at Purdue University:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/566/01/

US Government Printing Office:
Start at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/stylemanual/ and search for punctuation.

The most feared punctuation on earth, by The Oatmeal:

panjandrum said:

Punctuation guides suggest that one sentence terminator is enough. If the quotation at the end of a sentence includes one, no additional terminator is required.

​

Click to expand...

I agree with that.

In a fairly long life, having read a great deal of British and American literature, I cannot recall ever seeing two terminators to the same sentence. If I had, it would have hit me in the eye as being quite wrong.

Rover