Punctuation before ending a quotation

Question

I was reading an article and came across this sentence:

“Much wow, Bercow hid his opposition to Brexit so very well when he was Speaker.,” Mark Wallace, executive editor of ConservativeHome, tweeted.

This quote is punctuated with a period and a comma. Is this a mistake?

When I was reading on English grammar, I was told to punctuate quotes in the following way:

"Much wow, Bercow hid his opposition to Brexit so very well when he was speaker," tweeted Mark Wallace, executive editor of ConservativeHome.

I did change the structure around, though. Perhaps it is necessary to put a period before the comma when using their word order?

Does this answer your question? How should I punctuate around quotes where the punctuation required by the quote interferes with the punctuation of the sentence? — rajah9, Apr 05 '20 at 10:53
Yes, that combination ., in there looks like a mistake (misprint) to me. — GEdgar, Dec 31 '20 at 16:32
. and , are next door on the keyboard, so it's common to hit both rather than one, or to confuse the two (as in the notorious comma ellipsis). — Stuart F, Apr 30 '21 at 16:31

Ray Butterworth · Answer 1 · 2020-04-05T13:45:55.993

(Changing the word order just complicates the issue.)

For a long time, due to potential problems with damage to lead type, the convention was to typeset punctuation inside quotation marks where they would be protected.

Today though, that reason no longer applies, and quotation marks should contain what is quoted and punctuation should go where it belongs. (Many "traditionalists" would disagree, but their tradition is historically recent.)

For this sentence, I would punctuate it:

“Much wow, Bercow hid his opposition to Brexit so very well when he was Speaker.”, Mark Wallace, executive editor of ConservativeHome, tweeted.

That is, the period is part of the quotation, the comma is part of the overall sentence.

It wouldn't be wrong though to omit the period.

But putting both a period and a comma inside the quotation marks is just wrong.

UPDATE:

Ont the other hand, sometimes the "inside" rule might be worth retaining, if only for its comic effects.

E.g. the same rule was applied to parentheses in later editions of the King James Bible, producing what we would consider to be a smiley face:

Exodus 32:25 And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies:)

For a complete list, see Words In Parentheses, and search for ":)" to highlight this specific case.

“Much wow, Bercow hid his opposition to Brexit so very well when he was Speaker”, Mark Wallace, executive editor of ConservativeHome, tweeted. — Ram Pillai, Nov 07 '19 at 06:03
I am among those who would omit the period/full stop. -- To me, the main problem is the comma after "wow" - it should be an exclamation mark: "Much wow! Bercow hid his opposition to Brexit so very well when he was Speaker,” Mark Wallace ... tweeted. -- That said, nothing on social media should be taken as a good example of English as much of it is published via the keyboard of a mobile 'phone where errors abound. — Greybeard, Apr 05 '20 at 08:25
@Greybeard Sometimes (eg in discussing these things, communicating with an exam moderator) the actual punctuation used needs to be faithfully passed on. Double punctuation may become unavoidable (even triple punctuation, if the original author used double). — Edwin Ashworth, Dec 31 '20 at 16:16

Punctuation before ending a quotation

1 Answers1