Hi, Johanna and all:
 
Others linguists I know follow Johanna's practice:
 
> 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.
 
I always thought this had to do with the predisposition of that
field (linguistics) toward discussion of -- and frequent
quotation of -- *word forms* (as in the example that set off this
exchange):
 
>       As to 'ain't', it was certainly ......
 
The practice seems entirely logical to me in the case of single
quoted words, though I do not follow it myself. . . . And then there
is my friend the philosopher, who demands that "logic" provide both
the period in the quoted sentence and the period of his own
sentence.  When his sentences end with a quotation, they are
punctuated thus:
 
        .".
 
Is this an idiosyncrasy on his part?
 
Didn't someone once tell us not to look for logic in language?
 
Carolyn Kirkpatrick
York College/CUNY