Ed Huntress wrote:

American standard style, according to all major stylebooks, requires
that the final quotation mark be placed *outside* of periods and
commas. Thus, the period should be after the word "proofreader."

I had the impression that that was true only when actually quoting someone.
I also forgot the comma.


The same style is largely followed in Canada. British style is
complex, based upon the American style for some journalism (but not
_The Economist_) and fiction, but the so-called "logical" style for
formal works. In that, the period goes outside of any complete
quotation, but the strict version reverses the use of single (') and
double (") quotation marks.

Is that the other error? In this informal medium, then, the quotation marks
would not be reversed and the double quote is as correct as in U.S. English.
I'm assuming that "logical" and "strict" refer to the same thing.

I avoid using single quotes because I've run into problems with all the
different ANSI characters that look like single quotes. If you copy text
from anywhere it often has single quotes that are not the same chararacter
you get from the keyboard.


There is no logical reason, for example, not to allow comma splices.
In fact, the latest edition of the most authoritative stylebook in
the US (the Chicago manual of style) has dropped its objection.

That actually seems logical to me. When you have two sentences they should
be punctuated as such. That's what periods and semicolons are for.


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