[Bugeater]

Originally Posted by milkman

And, yes Donger, I know that the commas and periods are supposed to be inside the quotes.

However that rule was put into place because of printing and displacement.

That was not the rule prior to printers, and the British still continue to place the punctuation outside the quote.

And just why, you may ask, do they belong there? Well, it seems to be the result of historical accident. When type was handset, a period or comma outside of quotation marks at the end of a sentence tended to get knocked out of position, so the printers tucked the little devils inside the quotation marks to keep them safe and out of trouble. But apparently only American printers were more attached to convenience than logic, since British printers continued to risk the misalignment of their periods and commas.

http://grammartips.homestead.com/inside.html

**** YES! I knew it was stupid. Go **** yourself Donger!