◆ The punctuation mark always goesinsidethe inverted
commas.
Looking at examples
‘I don’t want to go,’ she said.
He replied, ‘It is important.’Notice the commas before ‘she’ and after ‘replied’ and the
full stop after ‘important’. If a question is asked, a question
mark replaces the comma. You donotneed both punctua-
tion marks.
‘Are you going to London?’ she asked.There mustalwaysbe a punctuation mark before
the inverted commas are closed.Sometimes the sentence is broken in the middle by ‘she said’
or something similar. In this case the punctuation is a little
more complicated. If the speech is broken in the middle of a
sentence, a comma follows the extra words.
‘I know,’ Esther remarked, ‘where the treasure is hidden.’There is a comma after ‘remarked’ because Esther has not
completed her sentence. However, if the sentence is com-
pleted but the speaker continues to speak, a full stop is
needed.
104 / IMPROVE YOUR PUNCTUATION & GRAMMAR