Where would you put the quotation marks in the following?

A) "Quotation marks", he said.

B) "Quotation marks," he said.

The comma comes before the final quotation mark. So, B is correct.

Also, note the lowercase 'h'. A common mistake is to use a capital:

"Quotation marks," He said.

Use a lowercase letter after your quote mark. It's the same sentence, after all.

But what about question marks in speech? Where do you put those? Well, it's either this:

A) "Do I need lowercase or uppercase after a question mark?", he asked.

or this:

B) "Do I need lowercase or uppercase after a question mark?", He asked.

Which is correct? The first one, A. The question mark is part of the speech. But it's not the end of the sentence. So it's a lowercase letter after the comma - 'he asked' and not 'He asked'. Some people would complain about the comma, though. Do you really need one before 'he'? I say, yes - it's a subordinate clause.

You can go quite far with your punctuation by learning the basics of the main clause and the subordinate clause.

Main Clause: can stand by itself and still make sense

Subordinate Clause: can't stand by itself and still make sense

Take these two as an example:

The boy went to the store

He got lost

The first one is the main clause. It makes sense if you said it to someone. All right, they may say, "Which boy? Which store? What the hell are you talking about?" But they'll know that there was a person who went somewhere.

The second example is a subordinate clause. It wouldn't make sense if you said it to someone. They would want to know, "Who got lost? Lost where? What the hell are you talking about?"

You'd sound like a crazy person if you spoke in subordinate clauses.

But, if you joined the two together, the person you're talking to might not think you're nuts:

The boy went to the store. He got lost.

(Obviously, don't blurt that out to a complete stranger. Wait until the stranger says, "Did you hear about that boy?" Then you can say, "The boy went to the store. He got lost.")

You can sound less crazy by making it all one sentence. Just get rid of the full stop/period and replace it with a comma:

The boy went to the store, he got lost.

So that it doesn't sound like two separate thoughts, you can add a conjunction before the subordinate clause:

The boy went to the store, but he got lost.

Now, the person who asked if you heard about that boy will say, "Yeah, that boy. Listen, I have to go. Real quick." With your knowledge of adverbs you can say to him, "Don't you mean 'really quickly'?"

A lot of creative writers will turn a subordinate into a sentence. Terry Pratchet was a master at this. Here's a quote from 'Lords and Ladies' by way of example:

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.

To sum up:

Main Clause - comma - Subordinate Clause

Make sense - comma - Don't make sense

You have to take care with your commas when you have a list of things, especially in the X, Y and Z format. For example:

Purple, Brown and Blue

Purple, Brown, and Blue

The first one suggests that you want purple and a mix of brown and blue. The second one suggests you want three separate colours. Here's another one:

Wine, women, and song

Wine, women and song

The first implies you want three things: the wine, the women, and later a bit of Karaoke. The second example implies you'd be satisfied with a couple of drinks at your table while listening to a few female cabaret singers.

The comma before the 'and' is known as the Oxford Comma (or the serial comma). The Guardian has a good misuse of the Oxford Comma:

"I dedicate this book to my parents, Martin Amis and JK Rowling."

Unless the author's parents really are Martin and JK, it should be this:

"I dedicate this book to my parents, Martin Amis, and JK Rowling."

A colon is used to clarify something, or before a list of things:

To clarify: use a colon.

On this page, we discussed the following: quotation marks, commas, semicolons, colons.

The colon is going out of fashion. In the first example, you could use a comma instead:

To clarify, use a colon.

In modern publishing, especially in fiction, you don't see too many colons and semicolons. They are considered too old-fashioned.

Don't bother with semicolons; they're dead; nobody uses them anymore.

If you do want to use a semicolon then they join two or more clauses together. The clauses are related. You could use a comma, but that would be too weak.

If that sounds complicated then you know why the semicolon is just about dead.