Punctuation - Quote Marks and Commas

When you have finished your first-level edit, you need to go back over your work and check all punctuation marks. Punctuation marks go inside quotation marks, not outside. If you've made this mistake often, use the search and replace option to fix these. Check to see that you have used the same type of quotation marks throughout the work, that is, one quote mark or a double quote mark.

Check to make sure that you haven't used too many commas or other 'stop' signs for your reader, or too few. Sometimes, the wrong placement of a comma can lead to confusion. I recently read an article about food and diet and came across this sentence: "Don't eat any foods, that contain fats or sugars." It's a poorly written sentence anyway, but the comma makes it seem as if the writer is advising the reader not to eat any foods! The sentence would have been better written thus: "Don't eat foods containing fats or sugars.

An unnecessary comma is more of a distraction than none, so only use commas where they will promote easier reading.