Editor:
I didn’t think you would be one of those slaves to provincial conventions.
Your challenge to Kathryn Corbett advises “punctuation inside the quotation marks!” (“Mailbox,” Aug. 19.) The American standard is actually to place periods and commas inside, semicolons and colons outside, and exclamation and question marks inside only if part of the quotation.
If, however, Kathryn uses the British style, then she has chosen to place within the quotation marks only punctuation that is part of the quotation. The British style in this regard is also known as “logical punctuation.” Try it in a variety of constructions and perhaps you’ll like its logic as much as I do.
Chip Sharpe, Bayside
This article appears in Sympathy for the Brownfield.
According to Robert Bringhurst, rules vary:
“Punctuation is normally placed inside … if it belongs to the quotation, and outside otherwise. Most North American editors like their commas and periods inside the raised commas, “like this,” but their colons and semicolons outside. Many British editors prefer to put all punctuation outside, with the milk and the cat.”