In dialogue, punctuation belongs inside the inverted commas. An interrupted speaker can be shown with a dash: “I was just going to—” began Tom. Trailing-off speech uses an ellipsis: “Maybe if we wait…” she said.
In essays, put only the exact quoted words in quotation marks and blend them into your own sentence: The narrator calls the house “a sleeping giant”, which suggests hidden danger.
Titles of short works, such as poems and stories, also go in quotation marks: We read “The Road Not Taken”.
Worked example
Correct: The narrator says that “the corridor is a throat that swallows names, which shows fear.”
- Only the writer's words should be in quotation marks.
- Close the quotation after names.
Answer:The narrator says that “the corridor is a throat that swallows names”, which shows fear.
Key words
- ellipsis
- three dots showing words left out or speech trailing off
- embed
- blend a quotation into your own sentence
- dialogue
- conversation in a story
Practise this
New questions every time.