(This is Mr Micawber again-- I am Anonymous here because I forgot to sign in... again.-- MM)
No, I'm in Yokohama, where the periods are indecipherable-- but I've
been at EF long enough to learn a thing or two. Which reminds
me: welcome to English Forums!
Periods
with Quotation Marks
American
Style
5.11:
When a declarative or an imperative sentence is enclosed in quotation
marks, the period ending the sentence is, in what may be called the
American style, placed inside the closing quotation mark. If the quoted
sentence is included within another sentence, its terminal period
is omitted or replaced by a comma, as required, unless it comes at
the end of the including sentence. In the latter case, a single period
serves both sentences and is placed inside the closing quotation mark.
"There
is no reason to inform the president."
"It won't be necessary to inform the president," said
Emerson.
Emerson replied nervously, "The president doesn't wish to be
informed about such things."
5.12:
… In those rare circumstances when confusion is likely, the period
not only may, but perhaps should, be placed after the quotation mark.
…
The first line of Le Beau's warning to Orlando has long been regarded
as reading "Good sir, I do in friendship counsel you".
Turner's
memory suddenly faltered when he came to the speech beginning "Good
sir, I do in friendship counsel you."
The …example
above,… may be imagined as being included in a work of textual
criticism, the location of the period warns against the incorrect
assumption that the quoted line ends with a period. In the final example,
however, which may be imagined as forming a part of an account of
an actor's performance, the exquisitely technical question of the
position of the period is largely irrelevant and may therefore yield
to "American practice."
British
versus American Style
5.13:
The British style of positioning periods and commas in relation to
the closing quotation mark is based on the same logic that in the
American system governs the placement of question marks and exclamation
points: if they belong to the quoted material, they are placed within
the closing quotation mark; if they belong to the including sentence
as a whole, they are placed after the quotation mark….
A.
Timm's additional explanation of the British style:
For example,
if the sentence you are quoting reads:
Those
men are beating that child.
The quoting
sentence might read:
The
woman cried, 'Those men are beating that child.'
The period
after child belongs to the original sentence, therefore it
goes inside the quotation mark. But, if the sentence you are quoting
reads:
Those
men are beating that child in the park.
Then
the quoting sentence would read:
The
woman cried, 'Those men are beating that child'.
Since
in this case the original did not have a period after child.