- Reiginko
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- Exalted Mythic Member
Posted by: Ghandi 2
Posted by: Mabian
Punctuation marks go inside quotations. Sorry, it's a habit.
Not true, while Americans always put commas and periods inside quotations, the British always put them outside (unless of course what you're quoting has a comma or period in it, but that's obvious because it also applies to question marks and exclamation points). Since Australia uses the British system, Reiginko was correct.
Well, in most cases that's true. But if you were to quote in this manner, for instance:
"Help me," Jack said, "I'm dying of thirst!"
Putting the punctuation inside the inverted commas is correct. However, when you're quoting in this manner:
As well as securing equal pay for women, the Whitlam government also made it straightforward to obtain a divorce, another major feminist victory that gave women greater independence, and assisted in freeing women from their “compulsory participation in the traditional roles of mothering and home-making”.
Or, if I were giving the source of a quote, punctuation would be placed after the source, rather than within the quotation marks:
In the spring of 1955, Rákosi accused Nagy of “right-wing deviations” and “nationalist tendencies” (Sugar, P.F. et al, 1990, p. 376), and Nagy was dismissed from the Party.
Or, if I was placing a single word or phrase in inverted commas to emphasise it as an important concept in what I am writing:
The new Party leadership, under Nikita Khrushchev and Georgi Malenkov, began a programme that was known as the “New Course”, which would initiate a doctrine of “deStalinisation”.
Placing the punctuation outside of the inverted commas is perfectly acceptable, though either method is fine to use. In this case, there is no hard and fast rule, other than to remain consistent within your own writing. It has less to do with where you live (though I wouldn't be in the least surprised if it hadn't been standardised by Webster) than with personal preference. I generally prefer to place punctuation outside of quotations simply because that punctuation may not have been what was in the original text I am quoting.
I like that we can have these discussions. :)
- Reiginko