Period after ) or before?

[Moogey]

This has been bugging me for awhile! Does the period of a sentence go inside the parenthesis or outside it? For example:

That's a good idea (or at least I like it.)
or
That's a good idea (or at least I like it).

Thanks!
-M

 

[foxfirebrand]

I always put the period after the parenthesis, as you did in your second example.
.

 

[TrentinaNE]

If there's no period before the parentheses, then it must go after.

That's a good idea (or at least I like it).
That's a good idea. (I like it.)

Elisabetta

 

[Moogey]

Thanks a bunch to both of you! Now I can continue answering questions here with confidence in my punctuation

-M

 

[maxiogee]

I would agree with the wisdom of TrentinaNE. (…and this applies also to Quotation Marks.)

 

[foxfirebrand]

It's a point of personal style, but I don't put parentheses around a free-standing sentence. I see parenthetic words, phrases and clauses as incidental (rather than subordinate) inclusions within a sentence-- but then I still tend to write in periodic structure, which necessarily entails long sentences.

Ad-speak is another possibility. Sentence fragments. Punchy images. A style that leaves little room for insertions. Hey, it's all about the reader's attention span. But I don't like it.

I'm not saying someone who put parentheses around that last sentence (which actually is a sentence) is wrong-- it's a matter of style like my preference of the m-dash, whereas - as you can readily find - others prefer an n-dash.

Since when do periods go outside the quotation marks though? That's a new topic, so anyone wanting to pursue it further might want to resurrect one of these recent threads.
.

 

[panjandrum]

A parenthetical thought is either part of a sentence or a complete sentence.
If it's part of a sentence, the sentence terminator will come after the ().
If it's a complete sentence, the sentence terminator will come within the ().

Alternatively, Elisabetta got it right

 

[rsweet]

I would agree with the wisdom of TrentinaNE. (…and this applies also to Quotation Marks.)

Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks (at least in every AE style guide I've seen). Question marks and exclamation marks follow the rule being discussed here.

 

[maxiogee]

Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks (at least in every AE style guide I've seen). Question marks and exclamation marks follow the rule being discussed here.

You say "Periods and commas always go inside", but I need to put one outside if I wish to ask about colons and to put it inside would be to imply that you used a comma there.

You say "Periods and commas always go inside", what about colons?

 

[panjandrum]

Inside the parentheses (or inside the quotation marks) should be everything that is needed for the included text - and nothing else.

 

[rsweet]

You say "Periods and commas always go inside", but I need to put one outside if I wish to ask about colons and to put it inside would be to imply that you used a comma there.

You say "Periods and commas always go inside", what about colons?

BE style may be different from AE, but in AE periods and commas always go inside quotation marks. Colons and semicolons go outside unless they are part of the quotation. "Periods and commas always go inside," she said; maybe if you're in Ireland they go outside sometimes?

 

[JamesM]

According to "Eats, Shoots and Leaves", (a wonderful book,) there is a definite difference between the way AE writers handle punctuation within parentheses and quotation markes and the way BE writers do. It is a stylistic difference.