<p>cbug, I found the following interesting because I do put periods and commas outside quotes, depending on the cirmucmstances. I’ve worked in a copy writing job in Europe and guess I picked it up there.</p>
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Now, keep in mind that this comma and period inside the quotation marks business is strictly American usage. The British don’t do it that way. They are inclined to place commas and periods logically rather than conventionally, depending on whether the punctuation belongs to the quotation or to the sentence that contains the quotation, just as we do with question marks and exclamation points.</p>
<p>Since most of my international students were taught in schools that followed the British system, I tell them to continue placing their commas and periods as they were taught. In the first place, most of them will soon return to their home countries, so it would be silly to force them to switch to our style for the few years that they are here.</p>
<p>But even more important is the matter of consistency. If we try to force international students to adopt the American style, they will end up mixing the two styles, sometimes placing commas and periods inside, sometimes outside quotation marks. It is far better for them to continue using the British style than to incongruously blend the two.
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<p><a href=“http://grammartips.homestead.com/inside.html[/url] ”>http://grammartips.homestead.com/inside.html</a></p> ;