Full Stop - Punctuation Styles When Quoting

Punctuation Styles When Quoting

The traditional convention in American English and in Canada is "aesthetic" punctuation, or "typesetters' quotation", where full stops and commas are included inside quotation marks even if they are not part of the quoted sentence. The style used in the UK, and to a lesser extent in the U.S., is "logical punctuation", which stays true to the punctuation used by the original source, placing commas and full stops inside or outside quotation marks depending on where they were placed in the material that is being quoted. Scientific and technical publications, including in the U.S., almost universally use it for that reason.

The aesthetic or typesetter's rule was standard in early 19th-century Britain; its application was advocated, for example, in the influential book The King's English by Fowler and Fowler.

• "Carefree" means "free from care or anxiety." (aesthetic or typesetters' style)
• "Carefree" means "free from care or anxiety". (logical style used here because the full stop was not part of the original quotation)

Before the advent of mechanical type, the order of quotation marks with full stops and commas was not given much consideration. The printing press required that the easily damaged smallest pieces of type for the comma and full stop be protected behind the more robust quotation marks. Typesetters' style still adheres to this older tradition in formal writing. It is taught to American schoolchildren when they learn how to draft prose, and is strictly observed in most books, newspapers, magazines, and journals.

References: The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition; Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford.