Non-Designer’s Type Book, The, Second Edition

Quotation Marks

Of course you are using proper quotation marks (“ ”) and not typewriter marks (″). American standards decree that periods and commas be placed inside quotation marks, always. Like it or not, that’s the way it is in America; some other countries do it differently.^[*]

^[*] Note: The delightful book that you may have seen called Eats, Shoots and Leaves is from Britain where they use quotation marks differently (essentially, their rule is similar to our rule, above, about exclamation points and question marks). In the American version, the publishers did not adjust the book for American usage; consequently, every quotation mark in that book is WRONG according to our standards. It’s rather odd that a book bitterly complaining that people ...