I don't know if it's years of doing linguistics or quite a few fewer
years of computer programming, but I've long since gotten into the habit
of putting punctuation marks outside the quotes unless they are a part
of the quotation.  This is not conventional practice, but it's
consistent and doesn't pose a lot of problems, except that occasionally
someone objects.  Of course, in my discipline and my one-time avocation,
quotes enclose literal values, and this usually means not including
punctuation inside the quotes.

 

Herb

 

 

I believe you will find that American printers have been putting the
quotation marks OUTSIDE the period (and the comma) no matter what the
quotes are marking for many, many decades.  Check out books published in
this country.  British usage is different---I guess you could say more
logical.  They do what we do with question marks and exclamation points.

Ed Schuster


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