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Punctuation help! - Cheesey

Posted: Sep 29, 2011

This doctor is testing proverbs on this patient. He does a lot of I said, he said stuff. I'm not sure how exactly to punctuate this. How would you do it? The comma placement is what is bugging me the most.

However, when I said "you can lead a horse to water", he said "you cannot force someone to do something", and when I said "you should not cry over spilled milk", he said "do not be so sensitive."

Your commas always go inside the quotes - This sounds like a doozy of a report

[ In Reply To ..]
The only thing I'm not sure about is if you should have an additional comma immediately after all of the words "said" i.e., However, when I said, "you can lead a horse to water," he said, "you cannot force someone to do something," and when I said, "you should not cry over spilled milk," he said, "do not be so sensitive."

That looks like an awful lot of commas, but here's what I got from BOS3:

6.2.11 Dialogue
Use a comma to separate direct dialogue from the rest of the sentence. The comma should precede the opening quotation marks when information introduces the quoted dialogue. The comma should fall inside the closing quotation marks when the remainder of the sentence follows the quoted dialogue.
EXAMPLE
At the start of the examination, the patient made the point of saying, "I donâ��t want a pelvic exam."
"I donâ��t want a pelvic exam," the patient made a point of saying.

Thanks - Cheesey

[ In Reply To ..]
It was actually a really nice report. Doctor spoke clearly, interesting psych report.

But that one section drove me nuts. Took all the commas out...really looked at it...put commas in...looked at it again...no matter what, it just always looked weird. With commas it looked overpunctuated. Without it just looked lost lol.

Thanks again. I have seen in my classes where the punctuation can go outside the quotes given the context. But that's college, not BOS.

Correct - Unforgettable Syd

[ In Reply To ..]
Correct U R, except commas within quotes.....

Another note - JS

[ In Reply To ..]
If you are doing anything where the doctor is quoting someone (and you will come across this A LOT in psych), you don't expand contractions. Therefore, in the part where you typed "you cannot force someone to do something," if the doc actually dictated "can't," you type in can't. The same goes for the "do not" and "should not." If he/she said don't/shouldn't, you type it. This only applies when something is quoted.

You never change anything that's dictated within quotes (including slang and even vulgarity). If that's what the patient/doctor said, it needs to be documented as dictated.

I'm not even sure if that is what was dictated in your case, but face to face, we usually speak with contractions to shorten our speech, so I just wanted to give you that tip.

Have a good one.

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