Chicago Style Workout 15: Punctuation and Closing Quotation Marks

/ May 30, 2017

Drawing of male acrobats performing under a circus tent

Get in the swing!

This workout centers on paragraphs 6.9–11 of CMOS 18. Advanced editors might tackle the questions cold; learners can study the relevant paragraphs of the Manual before answering the questions.

(Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual. We also offer a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online.)

Note: These questions are designed to test your knowledge of The Chicago Manual of Style. Other style guides may have different rules and guidelines. American punctuation rules have significant differences from those practiced in the UK, Canada, and other English-speaking countries.

Now updated to refer and link to the 18th edition.

Chicago Style Workout 15: Punctuation and Closing Quotation Marks

1. A period precedes closing quotation marks, whether double or single.
2. Colons and semicolons—unlike periods and commas—follow closing quotation marks.
3. A question mark always follows a closing quotation mark.
4. A comma goes after the quotation mark.
5. In an alternative system, sometimes called British style, only those punctuation points that appeared in the original material are included within the quotation marks.
6. When single quotation marks nested within double quotation marks appear next to each other, the period precedes the single quotation mark: “ ‘like this.’ ”
7. Growing up, we always preferred to “bear those ills we have.”
8. Which of Shakespeare’s characters said, “All the world’s a stage?”
9. “What’s the rush”? she wondered.
10. Take, for example, the first line of “To a Skylark:” “Hail to thee, blithe spirit!”

 

Image: Five Male Acrobats Performing at a Circus, Digital ID: cph 3b49215, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC.

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