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Which of these is correct?

Our company has a philosophy that "People Matter".

Our company has a philosophy that "People Matter."

Does the period go inside the quotes here or outside?

Randy Minder
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    Those aren't quotes, they're speech marks. Personally I'd ditch either and the that and say Our company has a philosophy: People Matter. – ElendilTheTall Jan 28 '14 at 19:44

2 Answers2

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In British English, the period goes outside. In American English, the period goes inside.

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Here's a pretty good guide about the conventions for including punctuation within quotes. Wikipedia has a section on it in the manual of style. In summary though, in American English punctuation tends to go on the inside; elsewhere it tends to go on the outside, unless the punctuation is firmly part of the quoted text.

As I understand it, the US convention of putting commas and stops inside the quotes can be traced back to typesetting problems with movable type. The tiny little stop and comma pieces (or "sorts") could easily fall off the page ("forme") unless there was a larger sort beside them to keep them in place. This convention was observed not just in the US, but elsewhere too. As moveable type started to fall out of fashion in favour of hot metal typesetting, the convention was retained in the US, but abandoned elsewhere in favour of a more logical policy (where the punctuation is only inside the quote marks if it is part of the quote).

tobyink
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  • Putting the punctuation inside the quotes makes no sense. How do you distinguish between "When Shakespeare wrote "To be, or not to be, that is the question,", his use of punctuation was [...]" and "When Shakespeare wrote "To be, or not to be, that is the question", his use of punctuation was [...]" ? – Simd Jan 28 '14 at 19:54
  • Well, you certainly wouldn't put the punctuation both inside and* outside* the quote as in your example. For illustrating punctuation styles, neither convention is especially useful - better to just indented block quotes, with no quote marks at all. – tobyink Jan 28 '14 at 20:00
  • Are you sure you don't, at least in British English, simply quote whatever punctuation there was in the original and then punctuate the sentence that contains the quotation in the normal way? – Simd Jan 28 '14 at 20:13