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The Weltchek Weekly

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Your Bulletin for Better Business Writing

Terminal Punctuation

  • Category: Review
  • |
  • On September 3, 2019

I recently read a bio that ended with the following line: He was also a contestant on the college edition of “Jeopardy!”.

I loved that quirky detail, but I wondered about the period at the end of the sentence.

You don’t need it. The exclamation point in the quoted matter—i.e., Jeopardy!—serves as “terminal punctuation.”

The same goes for the period at the end of the following sentence: The employee survey includes the question, “Do I receive timely feedback that strengthens my performance?”.

You don’t need that period, either; the question mark in the quoted matter suffices.

Now you have one less thing to worry about (and your copy will look cleaner, too).

For more on how to punctuate with quotation marks, read Periods Go Inside Quotation Marks.

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