A few years ago while copy editing an article, I was shocked to see something like this: “I lecture my sales staff about what I call ‘me syndrome,’” Jones said. What shocked me was the punctuation.

Quotation marks are used to set off a person's words, whether spoken or written. They are placed at both the beginning and end of the quote. Ex: Sue remarked, "I'll meet you at the movies," A comma is ...

I’ve gotten a lot of emails recently about where to put periods and commas relative to quotation marks. The notes were prompted by a recent column in which I mentioned that, in American English, a ...

An exclamation point ( ! ) is used to end a sentence expressing strong emotion or commands (Stop!), and may be used to close questions that are meant to convey extreme emotion (What were you thinking!