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In a list, should it be 'A,' 'B,' 'C,', etc., or 'A', 'B', 'C'? Should commas go inside or outside?

curiousdannii
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Linda
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    Presumably the commas are not parts of the literal strings being quoted, so they should be outside the quotes. The exception to this is that some styles would have you place a comma at the end of a quoted complete sentence, when followed by Peter said. or something of that nature. – Hot Licks Jan 13 '16 at 20:41
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    The finer points of punctuation are a matter of style. Adhere to the guidance of your editor, or of your favorite style guide. – choster Jan 13 '16 at 20:54

2 Answers2

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In general, BrEng prefers putting the comma outside of the quotation marks, while AmerEng puts them inside. Because of this, neither is universally accepted as correct.

Mark Hubbard
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Often in technical publishing, single quotes are reserved for literal references. Contextual punctuation in this usage is kept outside the single quotes.

‘A’,  ‘B’,  . . .

means the following list:

  A
  B
  . . .

Whereas

‘A,?’,  ‘,,B,,’,  . . .  

means this bizarre list:

  A,?
  ,,B,,
  . . .

This allows linguists, grammarians, and computer scientists to unambiguously write about sentences, punctuation, and computer code.

Except: Even in technical writing, just as elsewhere, quotes within quotes alternate between single and double quotes:

‘Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse,’ said the Hatter, ‘when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, “He's murdering the time! Off with his head!” ’

That's how Lewis Carroll used double quotes within single quotes in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The modern preference, however, is to have double quotes outermost:

“Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse,” said the Hatter, “when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, ‘He's murdering the time! Off with his head!’ ”

This double-quotes-outermost preference is supported by The Chicago Manual of Style in an answer to How should I punctuate around quotes?.

Community
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lauir
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