The usage of quotes and capitalization in the middle of a sentence
Could you tell me which one is correct? I am confused about the usage of quotes and whether I need to capitalize words in the middle of a sentence.

A-"I am learning from people that are experts in their own fields, about practical skills that can be implemented rather than just theories," he said excitedly, "The courses here give me a closer look at what has been done in China."

B-"I am learning... rather than just theories!" He said excitedly, "The courses ......"

C-"I am learning ... rather than just theories!" he said excitedly, "The courses ......"

I think A is 100% correct, B is correct as well. I am not sure about C. The reason why I wrote C was that I really want to use the exclaimation mark, and I want to connect two sentences using "he said excitingly".

Thank you! Please correct me if I have made other mistakes!

Question

The usage of quotes and capitalization in the middle of a sentence
Could you tell me which one is correct? I am confused about the usage of quotes and whether I need to capitalize words in the middle of a sentence.

A-"I am learning from people that are experts in their own fields, about practical skills that can be implemented rather than just theories," he said excitedly, "The courses here give me a closer look at what has been done in China."

B-"I am learning... rather than just theories!" He said excitedly, "The courses ......"

C-"I am learning ... rather than just theories!" he said excitedly, "The courses ......"

I think A is 100% correct, B is correct as well. I am not sure about C. The reason why I wrote C was that I really want to use the exclaimation mark, and I want to connect two sentences using "he said excitingly".

Thank you! Please correct me if I have made other mistakes!

Answer

Hey Kailin,

A is almost spot on. The only things I'd change is to put a full stop after theories and also after excitedly instead of a comma. Then I'd start a new sentence. It's actually fine to have a sentence by itself that is all quotation.

For example...

"I knew it!", he screamed enraged. "You stole my yoghurt."

B would not be correct. The reason is that the part of the sentence outside the quotation marks, he said excitedly, is not a full sentence. It's just a clause. So we don't need a capital.

With regards to C, it's nearly correct. There's just a slight issue with punctuation.

For quotations we have first the sentence....

That's not completely true.

Then the sentence is enclosed in quotation marks.

"That's not completely true."

Notice that the full stop is still there within the quotation marks.

Then we add a comma after the last quotation mark and our clause.

"That's not completely true.", he confessed.

This is true for full stops, question marks and exclamation marks. So our sentence in C would be...

"I am learning.... rather than just theories!", he said excitedly.

It looks like a LOT of punctuation but it is correct :)

Hope this helps!

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