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-UE
Having to put commas, periods, and other punctuation inside quotation marks
even if they aren't part of the quote.
Given the following script:
Alice: Did you see the blue chair?
Bob: Yeah, it had an ugly tint of orange under that light.
The following ought to be correct:
- Alice referred to a "blue chair".
- Alice asked, "Did you see the blue chair?".
- Bob said he saw an "ugly tint of orange", but qualified that by saying it was only "under that light."
- Bob said he saw an "ugly tint of orange", but qualified that by saying it was only "under that light".
The following ought to be incorrect:
- Alice referred to a "blue chair."
- Alice asked, "Did you see the blue chair?"
- Bob said he saw an "ugly tint of orange," but then qualified it.
The first and third are because the string "blue chair" does not originally contain a period, nor can the string "blue chair," be pulled from the original script. Same goes for "ugly tint of orange,". Now the reason why the second one ought to be incorrect is because your outermost sentence structure is a statement of what Alice said; the quote, including the question mark, merely functions as an object noun, and object nouns are not punctuation. Not to mention that that sentence isn't asking that question; that sentence is making a statement about someone else asking a question, so that sentence should not end in a question mark.
Comments
Yeah. The only reason for the rule being what it is (and note that it's only that way in the US and some other places. Most places, they put punctuation where it sensibly would be) is because it was more convenient when printing with movable type. There's no reason for it to be that way anymore except convention.
So...don't do it that way? I don't.
I'm revising something, that the organization using it gave me a marked-up version of, and they do it that way.
You'd think it would be that way, but I think putting a period, comma, colon, etc. next to punctuation on the outside looks really ugly, so I'm fine with this convention. In fact, I was relieved when a teacher corrected me to the conventional way in a paper.
I agree with Nines here. That and it's basically expected in MLA standards, as far as I know.