Learn English – quoting and punctuating a quote within parentheses

ellipsisparenthesespunctuationquotation marksquotes

How do I make sure to punctuate my quotes within parentheses correctly? For example:

Joe did not demonstrate insight into how he might alter his behavior to improve his social interactions (e.g., “I don’t know what I did . . . they just don’t play with me!”).

Is the e.g. correct? What about the ellipsis?

And is having the exclamation inside the quote and inside the parentheses all correct?

Best Answer

Your example sentence is punctuated correctly and both the "e.g." and ellipsis are correct.

One note, however, is that it is slightly ambiguous whether your quote has a long pause where the ellipsis is or whether you have edited the quote. In this context, this ambiguity is not a serious concern, and it appears as if you have not actually edited the quote. In the future, if you do edit a quote, you can remove all ambiguity by placing the ellipsis in brackets:

Joe did not demonstrate insight into how he might alter his behavior to improve his social interactions (e.g., “I don’t know what I did [...] they just don’t play with me!”).

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