Glossary entry

English term or phrase:

Punctuation question

English answer:

point needed after in-text reference at end of sentence, except in block quotations

Added to glossary by Charles Davis
May 2, 2014 06:34
10 yrs ago
English term

Punctuation question

English Other General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters
I am examining a document that contains a number of in-text citations that adhere to the following format:

Romantic poetry is characterized by the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" (Wordsworth 263).

I took the above example from this website:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/

I am now faced with a quotation from the Qur'an that contains an exclamation point at the end and am not sure which of the following is correct:

“Since I have vowed to fast for the Merciful, I cannot speak to any mortal today!” (Qur’an 19:26)

Or:

“Since I have vowed to fast for the Merciful, I cannot speak to any mortal today!” (Qur’an 19:26).

Or maybe there is a different way to cite this more correctly. Some may argue that the exclamation point is not needed here at all, but let's just say it is for the sake of argument since the same situation could arise in other circumstances, whether it is with an exclamation point or a question mark that is part of the original quote.

Thanks in advance for any insights you may have.
Change log

May 3, 2014 14:17: Charles Davis Created KOG entry

Discussion

Charles Davis May 2, 2014:
Chicago Manual Off the subject, but one thing I really like about the Chicago people is that they are so sensible. Browsing in the Q&A I posted in my answer, I found the following masterpiece:

"Q. Contracts often employ defined terms in quotes and parentheses, e.g., ABC Corp. (the “Seller”) shall sell ten widgets to XYZ Corp. (the “Buyer”). When drafting such a contract, I always put a period after the close parenthesis if it is the end of the sentence, such as in the above example. But it’s like listening to nails on a chalkboard to me to have a period essentially (ignoring the parenthetical) follow the period employed in an abbreviation. What do you recommend?
A. Yoga?"
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Pu...
Arabic & More (asker) May 2, 2014:
Thanks a lot, Charles. I feel a lot more comfortable with this now.
Charles Davis May 2, 2014:
Some editors, perhaps most, would reject the second of these on the grounds that the quotation is too short to be treated as a block quote; that will depend on their own rules and practices. As I say, there is no universal criterion here. Sometimes you see very long quotations, of many lines, incorporated into normal paragraphs of text, and sometimes very short quotations, even of a single line, are found set off as block quotes. And of course block quote presentation is commonly used even for very short quotations if they are epigraphs at the head of a chapter or section, for example; if these are followed by a reference in parentheses, that reference comes after the full point and has no following full point itself.
Charles Davis May 2, 2014:
Hi Amel The second. It is treated as a block quote only if it is presented as such: set off in a separate paragraph, indended (normally), and not enclosed in quotation marks. It is this, not the length of the quotation, that determines how you handle the punctuation. The length of the quotation is relevant insofar as it is normally the criterion for whether to present it as a block quote, but the actual length criterion varies.

So it could be done in either of the following ways:

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said, “Whoever fasts the month of Ramadan while cherishing true faith and seeking God’s reward, all his past sins will be forgiven of him. Whoever prays during the night Night of Qadr while having true faith and seeking God’s reward, all his past sins will be forgiven of him” (Bukhari and Muslim).

or

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said:

Whoever fasts the month of Ramadan while cherishing true faith and seeking God’s reward, all his past sins will be forgiven of him. Whoever prays during the night Night of Qadr while having true faith and seeking God’s reward, all his past sins will be forgiven of him. (Bukhari and Muslim)

[Text continues.]
Arabic & More (asker) May 2, 2014:
Charles,

I wonder if I might bother you with another question.

Regarding the issue of block quotes, what if the quote is long (two sentences) but is not presented as a block quote? For example:

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said, “Whoever fasts the month of Ramadan while cherishing true faith and seeking God’s reward, all his past sins will be forgiven of him. Whoever prays during the night Night of Qadr while having true faith and seeking God’s reward, all his past sins will be forgiven of him.” (Bukhari and Muslim)

Again, this is not a block quote but simply a longish quote that appears within a regular paragraph. Would it be more correct to punctuate as though it were a block quote (as above) or cite as follows:

The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said, “Whoever fasts the month of Ramadan while cherishing true faith and seeking God’s reward, all his past sins will be forgiven of him. Whoever prays during the night Night of Qadr while having true faith and seeking God’s reward, all his past sins will be forgiven of him” (Bukhari and Muslim).
Charles Davis May 2, 2014:
Example To use a biblical example, take John 1:1. This (in the KJV) reads:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Note the full point after "God" marking the end of the sentence. If you are quoting this within your text and giving the reference, it will go as follows:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1).

Note no full point now after God but only after the reference.

However, in block quote it will be:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)

Full point after "God" but none after the reference.

Illustrated in an American source here; contrast epigraph in block quote (with surplus quotation marks which should not be there) and quotation below:
http://books.google.es/books?id=dP5fBWYtGK4C&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&...
Charles Davis May 2, 2014:
@ Tony I see what you mean, but actually it will not be a question of putting another full stop at the end; there will only be one full stop and it will go at the end of the sentence, which is after the reference.

If the quotation is an exclamation or a question it will have an exclamation or question mark at the end, inside the quotation mark. However, if it is just an affirmative sentence, it doesn't have a full stop or any other punctuation before the closing quotation mark, but only after the closing parenthetical reference.

The point is that in this situation the complete sentence is not the quotation, even if that quotation is itself a complete sentence; the complete sentence is the quotation plus the reference. The end of the quotation is the end of the sentence in the quoted text but not in the quoting text.
Tony M May 2, 2014:
@ Charles Of course you're right, but I don't think Asker's context is really clear enough; you wrote "...the parenthetical citation belongs to the same sentence as the quotation, therefore the closing parenthesis is the end of the sentence and consequently a point is required after it..." — however, without any surrounding context, we don't even know if this is part of a longer sentence. The point I was trying (and failing!) to make was that IF the quotation (in itself complete) was ALSO the complete sentence, it seems to me unjustified to put another full stop at the end, since the parenthesis is merely an explanation of what has gone before.
Charles Davis May 2, 2014:
@Tony Your criterion is applicable if the end of the quotation is the end of the sentence, but this is not the case here; the parenthetical citation belongs to the same sentence as the quotation, therefore the closing parenthesis is the end of the sentence and consequently a point is required after it, even if the quotation itself is a complete sentence (though not if it is presented as a block quotation).

Of course, if the quotation were part of a sentence that is itself an exclamation or a question, then there would be an exclamation or question mark after the parenthetical reference (i.e., at the end of the sentence) and you would obviously not put a point as well, but this is not the case in Amel's example.
Lara Barnett May 2, 2014:
@ Amel If you still need some help with this question could you please post some of the surrounding text (before and after the phrase in question). Thank you.
Tony M May 2, 2014:
Aha! Sorry, thought that point was just the end of your question.

Personally, I wouldn't put an extra point at the end (as long as the quote itself is a complete sentence) UNLESS the quote is only one element within an overall sentence (as in your first example), which needs its own ful stop at the end.
Arabic & More (asker) May 2, 2014:
I assume I am correct in thinking that it should not be:

“Since I have vowed to fast for the Merciful, I cannot speak to any mortal today” (Qur’an 19:26)!
Arabic & More (asker) May 2, 2014:
Hi Tony,
There is a slight difference in that a period appears at the end of the citation in the second option.

Responses

+1
1 hr
Selected

point needed after in-text reference at end of sentence, except in block quotations

I am quite certain, without checking, what should be done in British academic style, in which I was trained, but I had to check to make sure that it was the same in American style, which, of course, is sometimes different in matters of punctuation. On this particular point, it is apparently the same.

1. If the exclamation mark belongs to the quoted matter, as it does here, it goes inside the closing quotation mark, as you have it.

2. If this coincides with the end of the sentence, no point is added after the closing quotation mark in American style, though in British style a point is added if the quotation does not constitute a complete sentence:
American: I heard him say "I can't stand it any longer!"
British: I heard him say "I can't stand it any longer!".

3. However, in the case you are referring to, there is a parenthetical reference after the end of the quotation, and you want to know whether to add a point after that reference. The answer is that you do need to if the quotation is run-on in the text, but with a block quotation you do not. This is so regardless of whether the quotation itself constitutes a complete sentence (as in your example) or is merely part of a sentence, and this is true in American as well as British style. The reason is that the parenthetical in-text reference belongs to the same sentence as the quotation; it is not a separate sentence on its own. Therefore the end of the quotation is not the end of the sentence, and the closing punctuation at the end of the quotation (here an exclamation mark) cannot serve as the closing punctuation of the sentence. So your second alternative is the correct one:

“Since I have vowed to fast for the Merciful, I cannot speak to any mortal today!” (Qur’an 19:26).

However, if it were a block quotation (used for longer quoted passages), there is no punctuation after the parenthetical reference at the end (and the quoted matter, set off and usually indented, is not enclosed in quotation marks):

"We find the following statement in the Qur'an:

<blockquote>Since I have vowed to fast for the Merciful, I cannot speak to any mortal today! (Qur’an 19:26)

[Text continues]"

I hope this makes sense!

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Note added at 2 hrs (2014-05-02 08:38:08 GMT)
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It's not easy to find an explicit answer to this question in online style guides. There is no doubt at all that punctuation follows in in-text citation when the quotation is not a full sentence, but the precise case you raise, in which an in-text citation follows a quotation that is a full sentence, does not seem to be addressed, perhaps because making quotations full free-standing sentences is not generally recommended anyway. The following, from the Purdue OWL guide, is about MLA style, but I am confident that Chicago will be the same on this:

"Punctuation marks such as periods, commas, and semicolons should appear after the parenthetical citation. Question marks and exclamation points should appear within the quotation marks if they are a part of the quoted passage but after the parenthetical citation if they are a part of your text."
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/03/

The statement is unqualified; it doesn't say that punctuation should follow the citation unless the quotation is a full sentence. Lower down the same page they present a block quote example with no point after the reference, which bears out what I've said.

There's also a relevant Chicago Q&A here (see the eighth question, beginning "With the author-date system, I know that punctuation is supposed to follow the reference"):
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Pu...
Note from asker:
Thanks, Charles! I really appreciate the detailed explanation and references. The Chicago Q&A in particular mirrors the situation I am facing.
Peer comment(s):

agree JaneTranslates : Charles, this is an amazingly detailed answer. Like the asker, I find the CMOS Q&A link particularly helpful; I saved the link to use with my translation students. Thank you! (I'm a big CMOS fan; have a paid online subscription. Worth every penny.)
5 hrs
Thanks, Jane! I agree; it's really excellent.
Something went wrong...
4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "Thanks again for your kind help! "
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