I couldn’t find a “grammar help” community so I thought this might be a good place to pose this question. Sorry for asking something that boils down to “please help me with my homework” but I’m at a loss. I’m supposed to be using MLA format.
Here’s the text I’m quoting:
“While recognizing the critical potential of the dystopic imagination, this volume examines it as a form of urban representation; the modern city, after all, appears to be an instantiation of a dystopic form of society.”
Here’s my sentence:
Prakash notes the utility of dystopian media, stating “this volume examines it as a form of urban representation; the modern city, after all, appears to be an instantiation of a dystopic form of society.” (3)
Is this right? Should I have the period at the end of the parentheses? I tried looking through my textbook and a few online articles but I couldn’t find an example with a parenthetical citation and a quote that includes a period. Thanks for the help!
This isn’t what you’re asking, but since your question has been answered, and this might actually be helpful for you:
You should put a comma before “but”. Like so:
Sorry for asking something that boils down to “please help me with my homework”, but I’m at a loss.
A comma is required when you are separating clauses which would be complete sentences. “I’m at a loss” is a complete sentence, so there should be a comma before the “but”.
This is a rule about English I absolutely despise and generally refuse to follow (makes me twitch as a programmer), but shouldn’t the punctuation (the comma you added) go inside the quotes?
As far as I’m aware, in English, the punctuation goes outside the quotes, unless it’s part of the original quote.
In American, the punctuation goes inside the quotes, even if it’s not part of the sentence being quoted.
I’m unsure of the habits of other English-speaking countries.
Ahhh ok. I speak American. Good reason to find another country I guess.
Not American here. Why would you put the punctuation inside the quotes unless you are quoting punctuation? Unless I misunderstood what you mean.
For example:
Bob used an exclamation point, so I quoted an exclamation. If it is the end of my sentence then I use a full stop, if I quote it then it would imply the end of their sentence even though it wasn’t.
Would be quoted as
It distorts the context.
It depends on the country. This is true in American English and it’s what we teach in schools. In British English (which, in my experience, is what most ESL learners outside the US end up learning), they go outside the quotes. Source.
My experience is that EFL learners tend to be taught American English, but that might just be in Japan.
I’m French and we mostly mearn British English in school. But then again, we’re very close to GB and Japan is very Americanized (occupation and all that). I think a country that’s halfway between them and has no privileged relationship with either should step into this conversation. Like Russia, Mongolia or Kazakhstan. However, as you might have noticed from the previous sentence, I refuse to use the Oxford comma because we don’t use it on French and it doesn’t make sense.
I would be very interested in the experiences of people learning on countries which are neither European nor especially attached to the US.
American English puts punctuation inside the quotes. I’m an American, but I think it makes more sense the way the British do it, so I switched to their way.