Logical punctuation: Should we start placing commas outside quotation marks?

Conan's staffers' kids say the darndest things. Unfortunately, in this case "darndest" means "incriminating".

via slate.com

Slate's Ben Yagoda makes a good case for 'logical' or British-style punctuation rules when it comes to punctuating a sentence with quoted portions:

I practice British spelling in most communication, as that's how I was educated, but for the publications I'm involved in I mandate American spelling and associated punctuation rules. However, I'd never considered this aspect of American punctuation: when a sentence contains a quoted portion, which appears at the end of a sentence or clause, the closing punctuation mark for that sentence or clause goes inside the closing quote mark of the quotation.

This is of course distinct from dialogue, quoted or fictitious, where the punctuation is part of the sentence being uttered -- a distinction Yagoda fails to clarify in this article.

"I'm feeling a mite peckish," she said. "I could do with something to eat."

That's dialogue; it's punctuated specifically to suit the sentence being quoted.

Describing herself as "a mite peckish", she said she could do with "something to eat".

And that's a sentence with quoted fragments. Because these fragments aren't themselves sentences, and are only little self-contained units, they should be treated no differently from any other word -- quote marks notwithstanding.

I'm actually surprised that this is apparently done differently in the US (at least historically) and I'm glad to see the language gradually self-correcting to a more logical rule.

While I'm all for the preservation of language, even its exigencies, this is clearly a case where historical continuity is damaging to clarity.

It's important to carefully curate the evolution of language, spoken and written, to prevent divergence and allow people from different places in a country, and even different centuries, to communicate clearly through the written word.

When a rule changes or is entirely abandoned in favor of clearer communication, even marginally so, that's something worth standing behind.

Details matter.

- Alex