quotation marks

   (inverted commas)

   An issue that arises frequently in Britain but almost never in America is whether to put periods and other punctuation inside or outside quotation marks when they appear together. The practice that prevails in America and is increasingly common in Britain is to put the punctuation inside the quotes. Thus, "He said, 'I will not go/ " But some publishers prefer the punctuation to fall outside except when it is part of the quotation. Thus the example above would be "He said, 'I will not go\"

   When quotation marks are used to set off a complete statement, the first word of the quotation should be capitalized ("He said,1 Victory is ours' ") except when the quotation is preceded by that ("He said that Victory is ours' "). Fowler believed that no punctuation was necessary to set off attributive quotations; he would, for instance, delete the commas from the following: "Tomorrow," he said, "is a new day." His argument was that commas are not needed to mark the interruption or introduction of a quotation because the quotation marks already do that. Logically he is correct. But with equal logic we could argue that question marks should be dispensed with on the grounds that the context almost always makes it clear that a question is being asked. The commas are required not by logic but by convention.