OLIVERbackupHOME

Recently, I encountered a grammar issue that I have meant to figure out for some time. Now is that time.

The English language is largely a messy tangle of inconsistent rules and exceptions to those rules. The subject of this post will highlight a portion of that messiness. When ending any written sentence, the convention is to use a one of three punctuation marks: exclamation, question, or period. That is straight-forward enough. But things get a little stickier when the end of the sentence (or, in the case of the comma, a dependent clause) also involves a quotation mark. The question is, does the punctuation mark go inside of or outside of the closing quotation mark?

THE RULE FOR ALL PUNCTUATION BESIDES PERIODS AND COMMAS:

With question marks and exclamation marks (and even colons and semi-colons), the answer is dictated by context. If the punctuation mark is part of the quoted material, then logic dictates that it be contained with the quotation marks. The same is not true of period and comma usage (at least in the United States).

THE RULE FOR PERIODS AND COMMAS:

American usage places periods and commas inside of the quotation marks regardless of logic, with one exception.

THE EXCEPTION:

If the last item in the sentence is a single letter or a numeral (of any length, i.e., 1 or 1,000), the period or comma will go outside of the quotation marks.

Why is this the rule? That is a question I cannot answer. In other English-speaking countries around the world, like Britain, the rule for periods and commas is identical to the rule for question marks and exclamation points (i.e., let logic dictate the placement). The bottom line for us is that periods and commas go inside the quotation marks they are directly next to (with the exception for single letters and numerals). Go figure.