"xxx." or "xxx".

[Terence Kierans <TKierans -at- TRANSIGO -dot- NET -dot- AU>]

You wrote:
>Five technical writers, one office, two opinions.   When a sentence
ends with
>a word in quotation marks, do you put the punctuation (period or
comma - we
>agree on the other punctuation marks) inside the quotation marks or
outside
>the quotation marks?  The various guides that we checked all
indicated that
>1a and 2a (below) are correct, but some of the writers swear that
they were
>taught to follow 1b and 2b.   What do you think?
>
>1a.   "Tell me what you think," said Barb.
>1b.   "Tell me what you think", said Barb.
>
>2a.    Each fix is moved to the restricted area by a "gatekeeper."
>2b.    Each fix is moved to the restricted area by a "gatekeeper".

I was taught that the "bs" have it. The period or comma belongs to the
sentence, not the quotation. The last item prior to the closing
quotation mark could be an exclamation or question mark, so for
consistency too the period or comma should follow the closing
quotation mark, not precede.

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