Punctuation: Italics and Quotation Marks

1. Use italics for titles of items and for words, letters and figures referred to as such and for foreign words.
Ex. I plan to quote The New York Times.

2. Direct quotations are enclosed with quotation marks, capital letters, set off by commas, question marks or exclamation points.
Ex. The teacher said, "Put everything away."

 3. When a quoted sentence is divided into two parts by an interrupting expression, the second part begins with a small letter.
Ex. "I saw," she said, "them taking it."

 4. Commas and periods are always placed inside closing quotation marks.
Ex. "I haven't read the book," said Anna, "but I would like to."

5. Semicolons and colons are always placed outside closing quotation marks.
Ex. Anna said, "I hope we're not lost"; Calvin ignored her.

6. Question marks and exclamation points are placed inside the closing quotation marks if the quotation is a question or an exclamation; other wise, they are placed outside.
Ex. "Yeah!" said Diana.

7. When you write a dialogue begin a new paragraph everytime when the speaker changes.
Ex. "Who's that?" asked Sam.
 "Who's who?" said Anna.

8. When a quoted passage consists of more than one paragraph put quotation marks at the beginning of each paragraph and at the end of the entire passage.
Ex. "Saturday night," said Anna, "they lost their dog. They forgot to put its leash on and it ran away.
There have been no news of it and the family is worried."

9. Use single quotation marks to enclose a quotation within a quotation.
Ex. "Don't tell me, 'That's not the way to do it'."

10. Use quotation marks to enclose titles of articles, short stories, essays, poems, songs, individual episodes of TV shows, chapters, and other parts of books or periodicals.
Ex. "Punishment" is one of my favourite chapters.