I learned to punctuate at the knees of European nuns who placed quotation marks outside of the quoted material, a convention called "Logical Punctuation". Think about it: If you put punctuation inside the quotationn marks you have changed the quote. Duh.
Americans generally have been sprinkling punctuation inside quotation marks but thank goodness the logical way is gaining ground.
Mother Mary Paul: If everybody else said "We're going to jump off the bridge!" would you say "Me too"?
...Language, the journal of the Linguistic Society of North America, for instance, has adopted the British way.* The first item under "Punctuation" in its Style Sheet says:
The second member of a pair of quotation marks should precede any other adjacent mark of punctuation, unless the other mark is part of the quoted matter: The word means `cart', not `horse'. He writes, `This is false.' .I
Comments