Kata Markon

["Eric Eve" <eric.eve AT harris-manchester.oxford.ac.uk>]

JOE ALWARD

The comma and the period always go before the quotation mark, even if they
are not actually part of the quote, and this is true for American grammar as
well as British.  This is not to say that even very literate British writers
always observe this practice, but they should.  After all, nowhere in the
King James Bible is to be found a single instance of a comma or a period
occurring outside the quotation mark.

ERIC EVE

I can't speak for American usage, but whence do you derive this rule for
British usage? H.W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler _The King's English_ devote a
couple of pages to this question and certainly do not espouse the rule you
state, but recommend that the punctuation mark should go before the closing
quote mark only if it is part of the quote. Again, what you see in print may
often be due to the house style of a particular publisher rather than the
preference of the author: for example Sheffield Academic Press have a rule
that the full stop (period in American parlance) should go before the final
quotation mark if and only if the quoted sentence starts after the opening
quotation mark. Other publishers may differ.

Best wishes,

Eric
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Eric Eve
Harris Manchester College, Oxford