On Wed, 1 Oct 1997, Pat McMahon wrote:
>
> Johanna Rubba wrote:
>
> > ----------------------As to 'ain't', it was certainly ......
>
> Please comment on putting the comma outside of the quotation mark.  I
> thought I was taught that commas and periods always go inside quotation
> marks.  Only question marks and exclamation points varied depending on
> whether the quoted material was asking the question or showing the
> emotion.
>
> A Harbrace College Handbook shows the title of an article at the end of
> an introductory phrase and places the comma inside the quotation mark.
> Comments would be appreciated.
>
 
I'm familiar with the usual prescription, but it doesn't make sense to me.
I follow the usage of linguistics journals, which prescribe putting
punctuation inside of a quotation mark only when the punctuation is part
of the quotation. That seems more logical to me, so I do it that way in my
own writing whenever I am not following someone's style manual.
 
Note that both are prescriptions; one seems to make more sense to me, so I
follow it. Also, I can get away with it for the journals I am usually
targeting for publication of my work. If I were to send an article to a
journal that required the Harbrace rules to be followed, I would follow
them.
 
I accept both usages in student papers.
 
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Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics              ~
English Department, California Polytechnic State University   ~
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407                                     ~
Tel. (805)-756-2184  E-mail: [log in to unmask]      ~
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