Wikipedia talk:Logical quotation on Wikipedia

Citations

I've eschewed article-style citations, at least for now, since they are exceedingly tedious to generate, even with {{cite}}-family templates. You all know how to read, so you can just follow the links to the sources and do so. Some of the cites in a few paragraphs seem a little redundant (e.g. citing same article 3 or 4 times). This is to not only at least indicate what the source was for multiple statements in the essay, but to mark where a better, more primary source is needed. E.g., in one paragraph, I've cited a single article discussing the contents of several style guides, because the article is from a reliable source and I do not (yet) have access to the actual stylebooks in question. One of them isn't even in Amazon's catalog, though it does in fact exist in print and has an ISBN. Some are in-house and would take some social engineering to obtain, e.g. posing as a freelancer who needs a copy in order to send a proper submission. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 05:51, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Secondary effect

As some "positive fallout", to mangle a metaphor, of all this digging around about logical quotation, I've improved the Quotation mark article substantially. It had an enormous amount of nonsense in it about "British style punctuation" that was being outright mocked in print by one of the lead editors of The Guardian. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 05:51, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

You seem to think that the term "American style" makes claims that it does not actually make

1. Concrit: This thing could stand to be better organized. You've got a TL/DR issue going for you and breaking this thing into sections by topic could really help with that.

2. The term "American style" is accurate because it describes what most American writers do. If 100% compliance is required, then your preferred term, "typesetters", is not accurate either. Look at it this way, just because the deep-dish pizza is baked in New York or London doesn't mean that we can't call it "Chicago-style pizza". The name refers to something that is common in one place or associated with one place, not something that is exclusive to one place. (Otherwise, the tri-state area wouldn't have such a problem with those pesky Canada geese!)

3. It's not that writers fail to understand that quotations are literal strings. It is that quotations are not literal strings. American punctuation does not make the claim that the terminal period or comma is part of the quoted material. It's kind of like how readers don't assume that "centre" is pronounced "sen-treh". Learning that the period or comma is part of the quotation process and that "centre" is pronounced "sen-ter" is just part of learning how to read.

4. Wikipedia should continue to use the terms "British" and "American" to describe these styles not only because that is what they are but also because those are the names that are most common, most easily understood, and used by the most reputable sources. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:00, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

In same order:

1. Noted. This is just a draft.
2. Chicago style pizza actually is argued to have originated there; but TQ actually originated in Britain. Not everyone calls it Chicago-style pizza (indeed, arguably most people don't; they call it deep-dish pizza). "American-style" is misleading (it's also the most common style in Canada, and number of mainstream British, Australian, etc., publishers also use it. I've already addressed why advancing a nationalistic view of this is an WP:NPOV problem not just for a Wikipedians, but for the sources themselves (they have an obvious financial bias toward doing so, which makes them unreliable on this point. It's not that anyone fails to believe that some style guides call it "American punctuation"; it's that it's a non-encyclopedic label specifically designed to engineer patriotic feelings (including negative ones in non-Americans). It's a loaded label. A near-direct analogy is the fondness of British, Irish and some Commonwealth speakers for referring to WPA-sanctioned pool (the kind you see on TV, and which will be an Olympic sport at some point) "American-style" pool, in contrast to "British style pool", which is actually played even at the pro level outside of the UK. (The analogy isn't perfect, because world-standardized pool actually did start in the US and "British" eight-ball pool (blackball) did start in the UK. They're still bad labels. Cue sports articles here note that these labels exist, but avoid them (or, I try to ensure that they avoid them; there's probably cases I've missed).
3. The failure of TQ to treat direct quotations as literal strings is why we don't use it here. No one has advanced any argument that British or American or any other readers are incapable of learning any particular style of quotation. That does nothing to fix the severe encyclopedic (and other technical writing) problem that TQ is inherently ambiguous. It's like saying "I have learned to drive screws with a broken utility knife, and you can too!" Doesn't make it the right tool for the job.
4. The "British" term has already been proven wrong, so we can't use it. "American" we can still debate about, but "British" (except mentioning it as misnomer) is out of the question. And again, your sources on this point are not reputable at all; they are advancing an agenda that increases book sales, on both sides of the Atlantic (and elsewhere).

PS: On my talk page, you asked for a citation to some external source saying that TQ causes problems on Wikipedia-style sites. There's surely no such cite, as you well know, and asking for the ridiculous doesn't do anything your argument look more reasonable. Your standard seems to be some kind of horror story that elevates quotation style to a life-or-death matter; you keep asking for "proof" of "harm". They're just quotations. Even supporters of TQ admit that TQ introduces extraneous material into quotations and is simply an arbitrary convention, not a logical preference. Per WP's principal of least change to quoted material, we don't do that, and that alone is sufficient reason to never bring it up again. There need be no "evidence" or "proof" that it causes "harm". Like using low-number numerals in prose ("they moved 4 times that year"), it's just an encyclopedic style issue, period. No horror stories needed.

— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 06:26, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

American punctuation is more like a car with an automatic transmission than a broken utility knife. British punctuation is harder to learn and doesn't provide any material advantage.

The "British" term hasn't been proven wrong. It's been shown to be non-universal. If 100% compliance were required, you wouldn't be able to use terms like "printers" or "typesetters" either. By your reasoning with "American", we could call it British solely because it was invented in Britain by Fowler and Fowler in 1906.

Yes, that's the other problem with this essay. You keep claiming that American punctuation causes errors and misquotation but you don't provide any evidence or sources. You just assume that it happens. The fact that you make a claim that you can't back up weakens your essay. You've established that you like LQ more, but we could just as easily say that AQ is better for Wikipedia because it makes for easier copy editing under multiple-user conditions. Darkfrog24 (talk) 12:41, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Please read what I wrote more carefully: By my reasoning, you can't use "British" or "American" at all; they're directly misleading, and unnecessarily politicizing. If you want to call TQ "esthetic quotation" or "printers' quotation" or some other term, I don't care, but our guidelines cannot continue to refer to them by POV-pushing names. I have no idea what your weird notion is that I "can't prove" that TQ causes misquotation. I say: "It's really hot and muggy in Borneo but not here; I'm cold." You quote me: "SMcCandlish said 'it's hot and muggy.'" You just misquoted me, and leave the reader almost dead certain that you've quoted a complete statement by me (one that says the opposite of what I actually meant to convey about my take on the local weather). You can make the argument that really discerning American minds might think "Well, I know in 'American quotation' we can't be sure it was a full sentence, because 'our' quotation system is irrational and user-hateful, so I'll interpret it as indeterminate", but we both know this doesn't really happen. And it's irrelevant anyway, since everyone, including Americans, understands LQ just fine. Now, you quote me accurately: "SMcCandlish said 'it's hot and muggy'." It's immediately and undeniably apparent that the period is not part of the quotation, so the reader is not lead to believe it was necessarily a complete statement (in fact, there's a very strong implication it is not). That's all the proof that's needed. Again, no horror stories needed (though I already provided you with an anecdotal one, of me nearly being fired over precisely this kind of misquotation in the Washington Post back in '93). If, as I strongly suspect, you still aren't seeing that, after this simple proof, and after the essay, and after probably 10,000 words in conversation with you, I don't really have anything further to say to you, because your position would seem to be utterly entrenched and non-responsive to reason. I'm simply declaring victory and moving on, because I have far more important editorial things to do than argue repetitively about the obvious. It's been obvious for over a century. This isn't even really my proof, it's the Fowlers', just in my wording. PS: Easier copy-editing for whom? No one but journalists and fiction writers, and WP is not a newspaper, blog, novel or fanfic site. If "easier copy editing" without much regard for the consequences of style choices were an actual goal, we'd just delete the entire MOS and let people write random crap. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 11:58, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

So you're saying that "It's hot and muggy[period]" is a misquotation but "It's hot and muggy"[period] isn't? That's silly. If you said something like "It's Adam's fault but not entirely," and I chopped off the "but not entirely", then that might mislead readers, but it would do so regardless of where I put the period.

If the term "American" is misleading because not 100% of Americans use it, then the terms "printers'", "aesthetic", "typesetters", and "logical" are misleading too because not 100% of all printers, typesetters and fans of beauty use it. Or perhaps it is okay to say "typesetters" because American punctuation is somehow connected with typesetting, even if there isn't 100% compliance. The term "American" is accurate for the an even firmer reason, because 80% of 90% or 99% of us use it, or whatever the actual statistic is. It's not inaccurate; it merely reminds you of a fact that you don't like, that there is a split between American and British English on this matter. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:35, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Regarding American punctuation and errors, I'll rephrase: you didn't back up your claim, and that makes it look like you can't. If you're going to make the claim in your essay that American punctuation causes errors, then you should back it up with something, like the links to sources that pepper so much of the rest of the essay. You shouldn't just expect your readers to take your word on it. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:39, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Wait a minute, is it that you think that American punctuation confuses people by making them think that everything between the quotation marks was part of the quotation? That is the problem. American English does not actually make that claim! Learning that the period or comma is just part of the quotation process is part of learning how to read. The teacher writes on the board "She said the words 'apples,' 'peaches,' and 'pears,'" and the students learn that the commas and periods are part of the process, not part of the material. Saying "American punctuation will confuse people because quotation marks indicate strings literal" is like saying "British spelling confuses people about pronunciation because English is phonetic." English isn't always letter-for-letter phonetic. That's why the British haven't stopped using their "centre" and "theatre" spellings; not because they're illogical, hypernationalistic reactionaries but rather because the system doesn't actually cause problems. It only looks like it would. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:09, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

"This is the problem" is the problem. :-) Your assumption that everyone just knows this and understands it because they learned it in grammar school is false. Most Americans have internalized this, but most of the rest of the world do not think that way. Secondly, even for Americans, LQ is perfectly understandable. Thirdly, LQ is preferred for its clarity in technical writing (which is much of what WP is, really). So, it's three arguments for LQ against half an argument, really, for TQ. I don't see that the pronunciation analogy your are making is actually analogous, so it seems a little strawmannish - I would never argue that British English is phonetic, and even from an abstract point of view, I don't see that the arguments are very comparable. It's not that everyone automatically thinks that TQ/American quotation style is string-literal; it's that no one knows for sure, unless they psychically know whether the writer was habitually using TQ, with internal punctuation that is utterly meaningless, or using LQ to indicate punctuation that matches the quoted source (which would be preferable anyway, per WP:MOSQUOTE – don't monkey with quoted material. Because the reader cannot know what was intended if we were to have a WP:ENGVAR-like "use whatever quotation style you like" un-standard, we have to prefer one standardized quotation style for reader and editorial sanity. The obvious choice is LQ, because it is closest to usage in the majority of the world, and (arguably more importantly) it is more precise and less ambiguous. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 00:08, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

PS: The idea that American heads asplode on contact with LQ – which you've not raised here specifically but which many LQ-detractor have suggested in one way or another – cannot be true, or technical journals and other technical writing would never use it in publications intended for an American audience, a major legal journal in the US would have never required it, etc. As anecdotal evidence, I published (as part of my job, not individually) an electronic newsletter in the 1990s with a readership of over 30,000, probably 85% American, that was done (except in quoted material) entirely in LQ. In 9 years, I only ever had three people write in to criticize my "wrong" punctuation. When I explained that I was using LQ on purpose and why, two said they could see my point, and only one said it was still wrong because I was American writing in an American-published newsletter for a largely American audience. I think, ergo, that the extreme "TQ or else!" / "LQ is just wrong!" viewpoint represents about 1:30,000 English readers, even after one strongly and inappropriately biases the sample to be American-dominated, since that many subscribers, many of them extremely vocal mailing list and Usenet debaters not at all afraid to flame my butt off for perceived transgressions, is a very statistically significant sample. (While I don't [on a hard drive that works, anyway] have e-mail archives to prove my 3-critiques-in-9-years stats, I generally assume I'm not thought to be a raging liar around here.) — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 00:19, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Some confusions?

Copies of both The Economist and The Times online style guides can be accessed via archive.org (links now suitably patched into our article on Style Guide).

I believe that it is completely wrong to suggest that "At least one of the major newspaper style guides in the UK actually recommends TQ."

The Times writes (under Punctuation):

Commas: keep commas where they should be logically in “broken” sentences. Thus, the comma goes outside in the following example: “The trouble is”, he said, “that this is a contentious issue.”

Note that punctuation marks go inside the inverted commas if they relate to the words quoted, outside if they relate to the main sentence, eg, She is going to classes in “health and beauty”. If the whole sentence is a quotation, the final point goes inside, eg, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”

The Economist's guidance can be found here. Again, it is clearly not advocating TQ.

I believe The Economist's prescriptions give a fairly clear summary of what could be called "British style", and which (contrary to your essay) I think is pretty universal in UK publications.

In particular:

• Do not put punctuation inside quotation marks if there was no punctuation in the original (eg "health and beauty" above).

This is something I think all UK publications would go along with, which is a clear rejection of TQ.

Where things broaden (perhaps) would be the second principle of UK punctuation in quotations, one loose rendering of which would be "Only then include punctuation if it is still doing the same job in the new sentence". (I think the Burchfield edition of Fowler's frames its advice in more or less these terms, though perhaps more elegantly phrased.)

This is something that is more open to interpretation, and where different people in the UK might draw different lines. (In general this is perhaps part of a trend where what is considered "good" UK practice may accomodate more flexibility according to sense than "good" US practice, which I have the impression tends to be more rigid and prescriptive).

If the sentence fragment you're quoting includes a verb then the punctuation should probably stay inside. If a complete sentence is quoted, then almost certainly so. If it is the final few words of a sentence but doesn't include a verb, then probably no punctuation. But it would be seen as a judgement question, and the overall "British usage" would encompass and accept some variety from circumstance to circumstance and from user to user.

Finally, there is a clear difference between WP's house style and accustomed British usage, and that is how to deal in reported speech with a full stop in the original sentence, when the sentence in the report does not end there. WP says put a comma outside the quotation marks, because the original did not use a comma. British usage is to put a comma inside the quotation marks, to show that there was originally a stop there. But (even if this might be identical to what an American might write), it is essentially misleading to say that this is "following American usage" -- it is following British usage, which in this case happens to correspond with American usage.

With all this in mind, it is useful to look at the Guardian author's critique of our Quotation mark article. Most of it simply flags the variety of lines drawn for when the punctuations is "still doing the same job" -- when the quote was introduced with a colon, says The Telegraph (perhaps the strictest); when the quote is a full sentence, says The Guardian (whose journalist then rejects this), "according to sense" from The Economist he gently jibes at - though essentially this is what he confirms he would do himself.

Looking at the example, I think he mis-steps (he pretty much says as much in the comments), but it's perhaps interesting for the purpose of improving our own article to look at why. The sentence at issue is:

"Carefree", in general, means "free from care or anxiety".

I think confusion may have arisen as the result of resonance between this and the reported speech sentence

"Carefree", he said, "means free from care or anxiety."

where the full stop would go inside the closing quotes.

Tweak that a little, by making the "means" a paraphrase and you get (IMO) pretty much a 50/50 call as to whether the stop goes inside or outside

"Carefree", he said, means "free from care or anxiety."

Tweak it a little more to make the focus of the sentence a little more editorial, and the stop should probably go outside.

"Carefree" he claimed to mean "free from care or anxiety".

Here the 'weight' of the sentence is more on the editorial, rather than the original statement, and the positioning of the stop goes along with that.

It's where that 'weight' lies that is generally the key determinant one way or the other in British usage. If the original sentence had been in context, it would have been much clearer that it was a statement about two phrases, and not reported speech, so I don't think Mr Marsh would have blinked an eye at it. But it's because it's set apart, and the structure of it looks like reported speech, that I think he was misled.

I also very much question his statement that

Slate would presumably expect us to render this as follows:

The minister called the allegations "blatant lies. But in a position such as mine, it is only to be expected".

I see nothing in LQ to justify that.

And I'm curious that you single out in your essay the quotation

'Len did a terrific amount for charity,' he said."

This is absolutely standard British usage, and is the way that any of the British publications cited would have set the sentence. It doesn't reflect any embrace of "American usage" or TQ in general, because there is no way that those publications would accept "health and beauty."-like punctuation added inside a phrase. It's simply the standard British usage convention for representing a stop in reported speech in a sentence which runs on.

The most fundamental binary classifier, it seems to me, is whether or not one introduces punctuation into phrases like "health and beauty". This test clearly does place TQ on one side, and British usage (and WP's MOS) on the other. British usage differs from WP's current MOS in how it treats stops in reported speech in sentences that run on -- but it seems to me that, even though a real difference, that is a lesser, second-order minor point of divergence compared to the main split.

Yes, one can point up that point of divergence. But it is the main split which is most obvious and most characteristic. Jheald (talk) 14:03, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

That's a lot to cover and to use to rework the essay or whatever this is. It's not WP:TLDR; don't get me wrong. I've just had other fish to fry and set this one aside for a long time, because LQ/TQ debate has burned itself out again for the time being. I will get back to this eventually, when the issue comes up again, and promise I'll go through this in detail and respond/revise as needed. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 00:21, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Belatedly going over this (forgot about this essay for a long time). The fact that two UK publishers appear to use LQ in particular doesn't prove that zero UK publishers use TQ; the style is actually common in British fiction publishing, but Jheald only seems to consider news publishers.

More importantly, this bit from The Times is excellent proof of major-publisher use of LQ:[1]

Commas: keep commas where they should be logically in "broken" sentences. Thus, the comma goes outside in the following example: "The trouble is", he said, "that this is a contentious issue."

Note that punctuation marks go inside the inverted commas [quotation marks] if they relate to the words quoted, outside if they relate to the main sentence, eg, She is going to classes in "health and beauty". If the whole sentence is a quotation, the final point [period] goes inside, eg, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty."

We've seen people periodically (again yesterday, in fact) make the bogus claim that no major publishers at all use LQ.

Jheald above is correct about "there is a clear difference between WP's house style and accustomed British usage, and that is how to deal in reported speech with a full stop in the original sentence, when the sentence in the report does not end there. WP says put a comma outside the quotation marks, because the original did not use a comma. British usage is to put a comma inside the quotation marks, to show that there was originally a stop there." Various UK publishers do in fact do this, though under what conditions they do it and for what espoused rationales ("to show that there was originally a stop there" is not a common one) actually vary widely. In an analysis I did for WT:MOS and buried in its archives somewhere, I was able to identify no less than ten different British quotation-punctuation styles, all slightly varying from each other. In particular, some do not obey The Times's rule above, and would write "The trouble is," he said, "that this is a contentious issue." (or, much more often, 'The trouble is,' he said, 'that this is a contentious issue.' with single quotes), because they have a rule to inject the punctuation into the quotation if it seems to help with the flow of the sentence containing the quotation. I've not done a statistical analsis of how frequent this is, of course; I simply observed it in the style guides or consistent output of some major British publishers. So Jheald's "This [namely 'Do not put punctuation inside quotation marks if there was no punctuation in the original'] is something I think all UK publications would go along with" is not actually correct, even if it probably accurately describes the majority of them with regard to most constructions. However, it is not LQ, which is "Do not put a particular mark of punctuation inside quotation marks if there was not the same punctuation mark in the original", i.e. do not replace a full-stop/period with a comma. Jheald's "It's where that 'weight' lies that is generally the key determinant one way or the other in British usage" does appear to be a reasonable summary of what several British publishers are doing.

Anyway, I don't see anything in the above dissertation that calls for a revision of the essay material, but someone can point out if I've missed something. The essay itself is mostly more than a decade old, so it probably needs some updating with newer material from more recent publications, and more historical ones are also available online for free these days.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:24, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

This essay remains seriously flawed, SMcCandlish. If it functioned as a mere opinion piece, that wouldn't be too serious. But it's linked from the main page of the Wikipedia Manual of Style, so the defects we find in it are a problem. Your latest remarks on LQ at The Times (just above) are especially worrying. You follow them with mention of "the bogus claim that no major publishers at all use LQ". In fact you have failed to show that any major publisher (The Times included) follows the extreme and quirky version of logical quotation that is entrenched at MOS:LQ – ferociously protected by you with walls of text against all comers, including many who know a great deal about the topic.

In particular, major publishers who adopt LQ in the usual broader sense (not your idiosyncratic sense) regularly replace with a comma a period that ends a quoted sentence: "I have a thick skin, but the charge of antisemitism is one that cuts me. It hurts me," he said. (See that from The Times, and many more retrieved in the same Google search.)

Wikipedia is virtually alone in implementing a weird version of logical quotation, rejecting a perfectly rational substitution that is all but universally accepted by other adherents of LQ. If you have your way, that defect in WP:MOS will remain. 49.190.56.203 (talk) 21:13, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

American legal usage

Resolved

 – The material in question was revised.

One of the major American legal style guides, ALWD (citations below), at rule 47.4(d), pp. 389-390, specifies TQ for periods and commas (with the exception of titles ending in a quotation mark, at rule 23.1(b)(5)), and LQ for all other punctuation. I don't think it's safe to say American legal usage is LQ. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:38, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

• Wikipedia citation format: Association of Legal Writing Directors (ALWD); Darby Dickerson (2010). ALWD Citation Manual: A Professional System of Citation (4th ed.). Aspen Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7355-8930-8.
• ALWD citation format: ALWD & Darby Dickerson, ALWD Citation Manual (4th ed., Aspen Publishers 2010).

I'm a practicing U.S. attorney, and, no, it is not safe say that American legal usage is typically, or even commonly, LQ. In my personal experience, the only common "legal" usage of LQ is employed in the drafting of line-by-line legislative amendments. Other than that, I have never encountered a court or other body require LQ in its formatting requirements. Moreover, the most widely recognized style guide for American legal writing, The Blue Book: A Uniform System of Citation, employs TQ in all of its examples, but without specifying TQ. Four generations of American lawyers have trained using The Blue Book. It is published by the Harvard Law Review Association, and its editors include members of the Columbia, Harvard, Penn and Yale law reviews. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:00, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have used Blue Book; but I'm a 1L, and we are using ALWD in our legal writing classes. I'm not going to learn another system until I have to. It should also be pointed out that ALWD doesn't exactly use TQ, as colon and semicolon are specified as always outside in TQ. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:26, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't recall saying that American legal usage was LQ, but that a major American legal journal did (had?) required it, but maybe I need to re-read this. I've been so involved in other things, I'd forgotten about this page entirely, esp. since the debate died down. I'm sure it will return eventually, and I'll be back here improving this page and after some polishing just make it a WP essay. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 23:59, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

The material in question has been revised (twice).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:11, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

American Bar Association

Resolved

You might not have had time to read the whole thread under the most recent challenge of WP:LQ, but your claim about the American Bar Association was refuted a couple of months back, and again a few weeks ago: [2] You might want to check the rest of this stuff too. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:36, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Appears to be accurate now: "The ABA eventually adopted TQ, because the US courts started mandating precise document formatting requirements, and they mostly based their standards on the GPO Style Manual ..." — AReaderOutThataway ^t/_c 01:30, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Article contains an indirect misquotation. CMoS never actually said "How about never?"

Resolved

 – Error corrected with original source quoted, and the mis-quoting source identified.

I remembered reading an article about this a while ago and I finally managed to track it down. It turns out that the Chicago Manual of Style's reply to his inquiry was actually a bit more moderate than he made it sound:

As you know, we’re pretty slow to jump in with endorsements or prohibitions when it comes to writing and editing fashions. We have the luxury of several years’ reflection between editions, and we don’t update our guidelines in the meantime. Our practice of having identical styling in print and online seems to work fine for us. Having just launched the 16th edition, we won’t be changing anything soon in CMOS. That said, we already recommend flexibility in styling for the sake of one’s readers. We publish books by Canadian and British authors, and in each case the manuscript editor decides whether to Americanize the punctuation and spelling or leave them as they are. If an online article or website is likely to be read internationally, that might be reason enough to adopt British-style punctuation. So it’s not like we would throw up our hands in horror. Naturally, we recommend consistency.[3]

"How about never?" was just Ben Yagoda being cute. Anyway, I have an idea how much you care about misquotations, so I figured this would be of interest to you. Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:27, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Wow, thanks for that. That will definitely lead to a change in the essay text! I'm actually a little irritated with Yagoda now for exaggerating. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 00:25, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I forgot about this essay for over a decade, but finally fixed that. The language was Yagoda's own paraphrase (and echoing a cartoonist's joke). The material is now quoted and attributed properly, and the misquotation is noted in a footnote so it doesn't come up again.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:34, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Process Question

This essay is dubious, to say the least. I actually don't see the point in trying to justify one of these arbitrary typographical conventions over the other, since Wikipedia policy has already come down on the side of "Logical" Quotation, apparently. But if it must be justified, it should be done more fairly than it is here. I'm curious if anyone here knows who made that policy in the first place? What is the actual process? —Uiscefada (talk) 16:48, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

@Uiscefada: I agree. This essay amounts to arguments by assertion, or even an authoritarian decree. Why not just let people choose the appropriate convention for the dialect of English they write in? Nerd271 (talk) 15:05, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Nerd271, Unlike most essays on WP, this one cites sources, so I don't know where you get "argument by assertion" or "authoritarian decree" from. Just because an argument doesn't reflect your preferred opinion doesn't make it faulty, and a position being advocated firmly does not make it "authoritarian" (do you know what authoritarianism is?) or argument by assertion (which also appears to be something you don't know the definition of: a fallacy taht resolves to asserting that something is "true because it is true", regardless of lack of evidence, contradictory evidence, and outright refutation – that is certainly not the case here). As as I said to Uiscefada below, feel free to write your own essay on the topic if you think you can muster a defensible one. And if you think you've found a flaw with this one, then lay it out with your reasoning and sources. Hand-waving in an "I just don't like it" manner isn't going to cut it. Next, consensus decided not to leave quotation punctuation to random editorial discretion for four reasons:

1. Typesetters' quotation (TQ, often mis-called American quotation) results in misquotation; it is unavoidable, by the very definition of what TQ does (inject extraneous punctuation into, or make alterations to existing punctuation within, what purports to be a direct and accurate quotation).
2. Even The Chicago Manual of Style, often misbelieved to be the strongest bastion in favor of TQ, observes the use of logical quotation (LQ, though without CMoS using that name for it, since it would undermine their overall favoring of TQ) in several fields, including philosophy, computer science, and textual analysis and criticism. That last point is crucial: writing WP, like any encyclopedia, consists of critical analysis of large numbers of source texts, including quoting them accurately and without any potential for misquotation or amibiguity about whether something has been quoted accurately.
3. There is no one-to-one correspondence between any country and any quotation style, so it is not a MOS:ENGVAR matter. While TQ is very common in the US, it is not universally used there (most of LQ's academic and other professional proponents are in fact Americans), nor is TQ confined to US usage (it's common elsewhere, though mostly in fiction publishing, including quite a bit of British fiction, as well as some British journalism, though a small minority of it). British publishing shows at least 10 slightly divergent quotation-punctuation styles, each tied to a major publisher or other institution; one of them does appear to correspond directly to LQ, but it is not the most common there, and all the other "British" variants are an inconsistent blend of LQ and TQ, albeit usually leaning more toward LQ, and at least some of them are not confined to the UK which is why I put "British" in scare-quotes. (A thread above on this page goes into what the gist of the most common "British" one is, which is nearly LQ, except that a terminal period/full-stop in a quoted sentence can be replaced inside the quotation with a comma if the quoting sentence continues, a substitution not permitted in LQ). Plus, of course, there are more than two English-speaking countries in the world, and whether any of them have consistent quotation-punctuation styles (unlikely) isn't anything about which anyone on Wikipedia has presented significant evidence. I don't mean just in talk page discussions, I mean even in article content: Quotation marks in English only has sections for allegedly American and British usage, and this material is actually riddled with nationalistic, anti-linguistic WP:OR and WP:POV-pushing (most of it injected by an editor who was topic-banned some time ago, but no one has cleaned up the material in the interim), and is missing detail on most of the observable "British" styles. I plan to work on that some day, but it will be a lot of research and a lot of stress.
4. Even before MOS:LQ, when we just had MOS:ENGVAR and a lot of actually incorrect assumptions about what qualified, people editwarred and fought half to death over punctuation of quotations anyway (because of numerous slightly conflicting "British" styles, and the fact that neither LQ nor TQ are actually national, and the further fact that even some of the "British" styles are used in the US, e.g. one is advocated by the American Chemical Society's style guide). And, unlike with French and some other languages, there is no national body setting language standard for any dialect of English (much less punctuation ones). Trying to treat it as a dialect matter on WP failed dismally. It simply is not like whether to use "colour" or "color", which is an easy matter determinable by looking at what the majority of dictionaries from a particular country say (including Australian, Canadian, and other non-US and non-UK ones; this data is quick and simple to collect and interpret, and provides a clear-cut answer, even for Canada where usage historically has varied, but modern Canadian works strongly lean toward "colour"). On a style question like punctuation of quotations, nearly every style guide says something a bit different, especially outside the US, if they even address it, and many fail to do so. For the exact same reason, there are no capitalization matters that are under the MOS:ENGVAR blanket, and all of them are handled by site-wide rules about when and why to use capital letters. No two style guides even from the same country agree on capitals, so there is no ENGVAR claim to stake.

People who have not bothered to read all the many years of previous debate about this will periodically raise their prescriptivist and nationalist flag on the matter to "challenge" LQ, and the result is always the same. WP uses LQ for solid reasons, and consenus is extremely unlikely to change on the matter. It's something we need to list at WP:PERENNIAL as tedious rehash that needs to stop wasting editorial time.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:40, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Uiscefada, all essays are dubious, because they are opinion pieces. Feel free to write an essay from your own viewpoint. MOS:LQ is not a policy, it is a guideline; see WP:P&G for the difference. Like all of them, it was written by members of the WP editorial community who cared to participate, and of course the full history of the discussion about it is in the talk page history (or much more conveniently, the searchable archives found near the top of WT:MOS). For the process of policy and guideline formation, see WP:P&G again. See also MOS:FAQ, which has a brief explanation for why WP uses LQ; and MOS:FAQ2, which goes into what purposes MoS serves, how it formed, how it evolves, etc.; and WP:MOSBLOAT for why MoS doesn't have lots and lots of additional rules and exceptions and codicils and footnotes and piles of examples covering everything anyone could ever think is a style question.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:40, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Other material on the subject

Just stuff I've run across, that may be of use for this essay and especially for fixing up Quotation marks in English (which a now-topic-banned editor mangled several years ago, but which has not been repaired in the interim). I collected some of these just to prove the point that LQ as WP defines it is LQ as it's always defined (and is not the same as any of the 10+ styles in use by British publishers, which are mixtures of LQ and TQ features), while others go into a little more depth. Some of these are just very partial quotations, and may be worth block-quoting at more length:

• "Punctuation marks are placed inside the quotation marks only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the quotation; this system is referred to as logical quotation. ... When a sentence fragment is quoted, the period [full stop] is outside. ... Within a quotation use the spelling and punctuation of the original." —Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies [4]
• "Anything which is not part of th[e] exact words must be placed outside the quotes" —Larry Trask, University of Sussex [5]. Also addressed double versus single: "As a general rule, British usage has in the past usually preferred single quotes for ordinary use, but double quotes are now increasingly common .... the use of double quotes in fact offers several advantages ...."
• "Questions of order between inverted commas [quotation marks] and stops [commas and periods/full-stops] are much debated .... There are two schools of thought, which might be called the conventional and the logical. The conventional prefers to put stops within the inverted commas, if it can be done without ambiguity, on the ground that this has a more pleasing appearance. The logical punctuates according to sense, and puts them outside except when they actually form part of the quotation. The conventional system flouts common sense, and it is not easy for the plain man to see what merit it is supposed to have to outweigh that defect." —Fowler's Modern English Usage (2nd ed., H. W. Fowler, ed. Ernest Gowers). This was later butchered by Burchfield (who removed most of Fowler's original wording on everything, in the 3rd edition) to: "All signs of punctuation used with words in quotation marks must be placed according to the sense." That has been widely criticized too vague to be meaningful, though Burchfield (in his defense) actually picked it up from earlier material.
• Despite the ambiguity of "according to the sense", Gowers and others provably interpreted it as meaning to following the LQ rule. "[S]tops should be put in their logical positions. If the stops are part of the sentence quoted, put them within the inverted commas. If they are part of a longer sentence within which the quotation stands, put them outside the inverted commas. If the quotation and the sentence embracing it end together, so that each needs a stop at the same time, do not carry logic to the lengths of putting one inside and one out, but be content with the one outside. ... Many publishers will not have this. They dislike the look of stops outside inverted commas if they can possibly be put inside. Here is an extract from a publisher ... '... placed before the final quotation marks, whether they form part of the original extract or not, provided that no ambiguity is likely to arise as to exactly what is quoted and what is not; this rule may not be as logical as that which insists on placing the punctuation marks strictly according to the sense, but the printed result looks more pleasing and justifies the convention.' But we need not concern ourselves here with questions of taste in printing. The drafter of official letters and memoranda is advised to stick to the principle of placing the punctuation marks according to the sense." —(This is a British author commenting on British publishers and demonstrates that the practices of "many publishers" in that country are not LQ, and specifically diverge from LQ on this point.)
• "[U]se quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses ... 'Jim is going', 'Bill runs', and 'Spock groks'. This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive ... to mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong in them. Given the sorts of examples that can come up in discussions of programming, American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading. ... 'new' or 'logical' quoting. ... The Jargon File follows [this] usage throughout." —The Jargon File [6] (published in paperback as The New Hacker's Dictionary, to which The Chicago Manual of Style has deferred on this point with regard to "computer writing" since at least the 15th edition; CMoS illustrates with the example "name your file 'appendix A, v. 10'.", and also observes this same approach in textual analysis, linguistic glosses, and other technical writing, and in philosophy writing, though the CMoS editors like to discourage it in the last of those, without any explanation why).
• "A system of quotation in which terminal punctuation marks are enclosed within a quotation only if the sense of the punctuation is part of the original material being quoted. Logical quotation is similar to but stricter than the common British style of quotation which is based on the sense of the punctuation in the context of the writing in which the quotation is being used (which permits limited insertions of additional punctuation, or alteration of original punctuation, in the quoted content, which logical quotation does not). Some sources (chiefly American) conflate the two terms and styles (e.g., Yagoda 2011)." —Wiktionary [7][8]
• "The second member of a pair of quotation marks should precede any other adjacent mark of punctuation, unless the other mark is a necessary part of the quoted matter: The word means 'cart', not 'horse'. He asked, 'What can we hypothesize about this example?'." —"Style Sheet", Language, journal of the Linguistic Society of America [9]
• * "[A] common designation for th[e] style has been 'logical punctuation.' The best way to grasp this is to look at an example ...: '[I]ronically, given the anecdote about "Tales of the City", PBS is the ONLY widely available channel that has any serious LGBT content; e.g. documentaries such as "Ask Not" and "Out in the Silence".' 'Tales of the City' and 'Out in the Silence' are units—consisting of the words and the quotation marks. Insinuating a period or comma within the unit alters it in a rather underhanded manner." —Ben Yagoda (University of Delaware), "The Rise of 'Logical Punctuation'. The period outside the quotation marks is not a copy error." Slate (2011) [10] (NB: Yagoda is a died-in-the-wool opponent of LQ, but describes it accurately. His only error is mistaking it for "British" style, and his Not One-Off Britishisms blog is entirely devoted to castigating British influences on American usage, so it's no surprise he had this blind spot. He did not look closely at British style and catch that most of them permit within-quote punctuation changes. This misapprehension is common, probably in part due to Yagoda's imprecise article in the first place. Yagoda also claims that Conan O'Brien and the popular music website Pitchfork are devotees of LQ, though since 2011 the latter's editorial policy appears to have changed to permit whatever quotation-punctuation style the writer wants to use, since the material now there is inconsistent.)
• "Where a quotation forms part of a longer sentence ... the closing quote precedes all punctuation except an exclamation mark, question mark, dash or parenthesis belonging only to the quotation. ... When a quotation is broken by words of the main sentence, and then resumed, the punctuation before the break should follow the closing quote unless it forms part of the quotation" —Butcher's Copy-editing: The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Copy-editors and Proofreaders (4th ed.). This work tells us flat out exactly where the British style of The Times, BBC News, and several other publishers comes from and why, and demonstrates that it is a different style, not LQ: "The position of the full point depends in theory on whether the quoted sentence is a complete one; as it is impossible to be certain about that without checking the original source, many publishers follow a rule of thumb that the full point precedes the closing quote if the quotation contains a grammatically complete sentence starting with a capital letter .... Authors who are textual scholars may place the full point according to whether it is part of the quotation; so do not make their system consistent without consulting them. American authors place the closing quotes after commas and full points .... When a quotation is broken by words of the main sentence, and then resumed ... in fiction the usual convention is to place the first comma before the first closing quote".
• "Any punctuation normally follows the closing quotation mark. ... Please check thoroughly against the source the accuracy of the text quoted in the manuscript (wording, punctuation, emphasis, capitalisation)" –"Preparing your materials § Formatting style", Journal of Linguistics, Cambridge University Press [11] (Less specific than usual; this seems to be boilerplate text for a lot of Cambridge journals, as the same is found in the others I checked, e.g. English Language and Linguistics. One was a little more specific: "Put commas and sentence-final punctuation marks outside the quotation marks." —"Preparing your materials § General Stylistics", Language in Society [12].)
• "Use logical quotation. When you place a keyword or other string literal within quotation marks, put punctuation, like commas and periods, outside of the final quotation mark. Correct: 'If you see the message "Authentication Failed", try logging in again. The message shows "Authentication Successful".' Incorrect: 'If you see the message "Authentication Failed," try logging in again. The message shows "Authentication Successful."'" —"Splunk Style Guide § Quotation marks", Splunk (software company), intended to "establish best practices for writing technical documentation". [13]
• "When a quotation is broken by such insertions as he said, any stop [comma, semicolon, or period/full-stop] or tone symbol [exclamation or question mark] may be an essential part of the first fragment of quotation. ... The true stops should never stand before the second quotation mark except a) when ... complete sentences entirely isolated and independent in grammar are printed as quotations. Even in these, it must be mentioned that the true stops are strictly unnecessary; but if ... used in deference to universal custom, it should be before the quotation mark. b) when a stop is necessary to divide the first fragment of an interrupted quotation from the second. ... The tone symbols should be placed before or after the second quotation mark according as they belong to the quotation or to the containing sentence. If both quotation and containing sentence need a tone symbol, both should be used, with the quotation mark between them." —Fowler & Fowler (1908) The King's English [14]. The "necessary to divide the first framgent ... from the second" part was unclearly worded, but the illustrating example indicates that it means to not remove punctuation that was present in the original serving a grammatical function between two parts that have now been split by the quoter: "'Certainly not;' he exclaimed 'I would have died rather'." F&F's material on this appears to be the "ancestral" implementation that eventually inspired modern LQ, and may have been the first to apply the word "logical" to such a system, though their exact recommendations differed from present-day LQ (and H. W. Fowler's own later material) in recommending no non-original commas in interrupted quotations (e.g. "I wonder" she said aloud "whether I should go to the theatre?"); calling for double question marks if both quotation and quoting sentence were independently questions ("Did you ask 'Where are you going?'?"); and moving quoted periods/full-stops (only) to outside a quotation at the end of the quoting sentence (He said 'I'm done here'.). These three quirks did not catch on.
• "This book uses the logical quotation system, not the misleading typesetters' quotation system. This means that quoted information does not include any trailing punctuation if the punctuation is not part of the material being quoted. The typesetters' quotation system causes extraneous characters to be placed inside the quotes; this has no affect in poetry but is a serious problem when accuracy is important. The typesetters' quotation system often falsifies quotes (since it includes punctuation not in the quote) and can be disastrously erroneous in code or computer commands. The logical quotation system is widely used in a variety of publications, including The Jargon File, Wikipedia, and the Linguistic Society of America. This book uses standard American (not British) spelling." —Dr. David A. Wheeler (Linux Foundation, IEEE), Secure Programming HOWTO, Chapter 2. Background, §2.10. Document Conventions (2023) [15] (If anyone is tempted to "blame" Wikipedia, guess again. This work since its original 2001 publication has used LQ all along with just with a shorter statement [16] – that's long before WP adopted LQ in 2005.)
• "No discussion of the illogic of punctuation would be complete without the infamous case of the ordering of a quotation mark with respect to a comma or period. The rule in American publications ... is that when quoted material appears at the end of a phrase or sentence, the closing quotation mark goes outside the comma or period, 'like this,' rather than inside, 'like this'. The practice is patently illogical: the quotation marks enclose a part of the phrase or sentence, and the comma or period signals the end of that entire phrase or sentence .... These acts of civil disobedience [using LQ against editors' preferences] were necessary to make it clear where the punctuation marks went in the examples I was citing. You should do the same if you ever need to discuss quotations or punctuation, if you write for Wikipedia or another tech-friendly platform, or if you have a temperament that is both logical and rebellious. The movement may someday change typographical practice .... But until that day comes, if you write for an edited American publication, be prepared to live with the illogic of putting a period or comma inside quotation marks. —Steven Pinker (Harvard U.), The Sense of Style (2014); he is a Canadian-American pycholinguist and style-guide author.
• "I generally eschew the peculiarly American convention of moving punctuation within a closing quotation mark. ... Instead, I use the convention that only the stuff being quoted is put within the quotation marks. ... the 'American' convention is, in technical terms, stupid. ... clarity trumps beauty. Moving the punctuation means that when you see a quoted string with some final punctuation, you don’t know if that punctuation is or is not intended to be part of the thing being quoted; it is systematically ambiguous. ... Throughout the text, the American convention of moving punctuation within closing quotation marks (whether or not the punctuation is part of what is being referred to) is dropped in favor of the more logical and consistent convention of placing only the quoted material within the marks." —Stuart M. Shieber (Harvard U.), "When practice and logic conflict, change the practice", The Occasional Pamphlet on Scholarly Communication [17] (he's a computational linguist, and author of the LQ-formatted book The Turing Test, MIT Press, 2004, among other works. Note that this also pre-dates MOS:LQ.)
• Worth reading in full; might be worth a block quote with some of his examples: Geoffrey K. Pullum (University of California) "Punctuation and human freedom", Natural Language and Linguistic Theory [18]
• The ACS Guide to Scholarly Communication (formerly ACS Style Guide) has been said to require LQ (at least in one edition if not the current online-only one). I can't confirm this yet, as the online one is paywalled, and I don't have the paper editions, the last of which came out in 2006.
• Someone suggested that the Australian Government Style Manual uses (or used) LQ. However, it regularly changes a terminal period/full-stop into a comma inside the supposed quotation ("Yes, that's all that happened," she replied.). Release notes on transitioning to the online edition [19] also say:

  The digital edition revises advice about punctuation used with quotation marks. It departs from advice in the sixth edition about the position of punctuation and quotation marks in sentences interrupted by expressions, such as 'they said'. The sixth edition recommended the comma be placed outside the quotation mark, before the expression. The digital edition recommends the comma be placed inside the quotation mark: the quotation mark comes directly before the expression.

  This does not address the question of whether the 6th edition (as the current version now does) would change terminal punctuation inside an alleged quotation; only a review of that edition will prove this one way or another.
• An anon claimed that Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies in its current author guidelines may no longer specifically require LQ. A review of it here demonstrates that they simply removed the term "logical quotation", but kept the same rules: Within a quotation use the spelling and punctuation of the original. Use [sic] in such quotations to indicate that the original really spells or reads thus. Your interpolations, if any, are contained within square brackets. If omitting material from a quotation, use three ellipsis points … If your omission occurs after a complete sentence, you will, of course, have four periods. Do not use ellipses to introduce or end quotes. [Ellpsis in the original.] This is clearly and exactly LQ. What seems to have set this off is that their material includes things like "McLeod instead resorted to 'writing letters to the government, calling on them to bring in provisions.'", and "[T]here is not 'any evidence that he led the emigration.'". This appears to be ultra-strict keeping of a quoted sentence-end fragment's original period/full-stop in its original position instead of moving it outside (which is permissible but not required by LQ), not the typical British/Commonwealth style of moving an extraneous one inside a quote when at the end of the quoting sentence (in most British styles, only to replace an original comma or other punctuation mark, but sometimes "always", depending the publisher). It would take examination of the original source material being quoted to be certain, however, and it's at least possible that it represents the latter (which would be a mistake the editors did not catch, given that "use the spelling and punctuation of the original" has no exceptions in their manual).
• The Elements of Style Revised (William Strunk Jr., ed. John W. Cowan, 2008) [20]: Question marks and exclamation marks are placed inside quotation marks if they belong to the quotation, outside if they do not. The same logical rule may be employed for commas and periods, and commonly is outside the United States, but U.S. publishers continue to adhere to the older rule that places commas and periods inside the quotation marks always. This is not surprising, given that Cowan's association with the Unicode Consortium, W3C's XML working group, and the Scheme (programming language) working group, and his authorship of a Lojban grammar. He does not define LQ in detail, and doesn't seem aware of British/Commonwealth divergences from it (or at least did not make note of them in this work).
• Edmond H. Weiss, The Element of International English Style (2005): The American and Canadian rule for punctuation near quotation marks, contrary to all logic, is as follows: Periods and commas ALWAYS go inside quotation marks, whether or not they logically belong there. This is known as the closed convention, which contrasts with the logical con- vention of putting the periods and commas either inside or outside, de- pending on the meaning or context. Americans also use the logical convention in connection with parentheses, further confusing the issue. Nonetheless, many, possibly most, Americans regularly violate the closed convention. They will nearly always choose the logical model. [Examples elided.] The closed convention is so illogical that William Safire, a major newspaper columnist—who is also an expert on English style—claims that he submits his columns using the logical convention, as a protest, and forces the copy editor to make the changes. Moreover, when I explain the [North American] rule in classes and seminars, or when I correct the error in the documents of a corporate client, I often encounter outright resistance or rebellion, an insistence that the rule I am teaching does not exist .... This work does conflate LQ with UK style, by not noticing the British departures from LQ.
• International Labour Office, ILO House Style Manual (5th ed., 2011): Quotation marks are placed after a full stop if the quotation is a complete sentence in itself (or, in a long passage, if it ends with a complete sentence); otherwise the full stop is placed outside. In the words of one authority: "The country's public health service is hopelessly inadequate."; In the words of one authority, the country‟s public health service is "hopelessly inadequate". Doesn't elaborate further, e.g. on commas.
• United Nations Development Programme, UNDP Editorial Style Manual (2014): Punctuation marks used in direct speech should fall inside the double quotation marks. It strangely does not address punctuation of quotations from written material.
• United Nations Editorial Manual (online ed., 2024 [21]): Direct quotations should reproduce the original text exactly and should be carefully checked for accuracy. Only the following changes are permitted: The initial letter may be changed to a capital or lower-case letter as necessary. The final punctuation may be omitted as necessary. The original footnotes and footnote indicators may be omitted. Typographical and other clearly unintentional errors may be corrected. ... If a quotation forms an essential grammatical part of a [quoting] sentence, it begins with a lower-case letter and the final punctuation is placed outside the quotation marks. Example: At the same meeting, the representative of Chile orally revised draft resolution A/C.4/58/L... by inserting, at the end of operative paragraph 4, the words "or at the highest level possible". A quotation consisting of one or more complete sentences is normally introduced by a colon and begins with a capital letter. The final punctuation is placed inside the quotation marks when it coincides with the end of the sentence. Example: In his report on the work of the Organization, the Secretary-General made the following observation: "When it was created more than half a century ago, in the convulsive aftermath of world war, the United Nations reflected humanity’s greatest hopes for a just and peaceful global community. It still embodies that dream." Note lack of permission ever to move punctuation inside or to alter it in place.
• UNESCO Style Manual for the Presentation of English-language Texts (2nd revd. ed., 2004): As a general matter: Quoted matter, obviously, should not be amended. More specifically: Punctuation marks should be placed within quotation marks if these form part of the original, otherwise they should be placed outside. ... The report stated: ‘at no time were “drop-outs” mentioned before that year’. ... Placing of commas: 'Leave me alone,' she said, 'I’m tired.'; 'The situation remains', he said, 'very tense.' (no comma after ‘remains’ in original sentence) .... Placing of note references: As Smith (1992) insists: 'This is partly due to a wide experience of education systems.' ³; We can see that 'amateurs',^* who are ... .... Placing of question marks: The slogan was 'Who shall be first?' (but Why was the programme 'put on ice'?)
• World Health Organization, WHO Style Guide, 2nd ed., 2013: As a general matter: The original spelling in quoted materials, references and names of organizations must be reproduced exactly. More specifically: All quotations from printed material should exactly match the originals in wording, spelling, punctuation, use of capital letters, etc. Punctuation: If a question mark or an exclamation mark is part of the sentence quoted, put the punctuation mark within the quotation marks. If the punctuation mark is part of a longer sentence within which the quotation stands, put the punctuation mark outside the quotation marks. If the quotation and the sentence containing it end together, place a single full stop outside the closing quotation mark. ... If the quotation is part of a dialogue and is a sentence, put the full stop inside the closing quotation mark. "I suppose," she said, “that he admires your work.” When giving only a partial quotation or citing expressions as examples, put the full stop outside. Use hyphens in "easy-to-understand directions” but not in “the directions are easy to understand”. The stated rules are quite clear, but one of the examples is not: "I suppose," she said, “that he admires your work.” implies an original sentence of "I suppose, that he admires your work.” which is not impossible but seems unlikely, at least in writing after the first half of the 20th century. It's as if the comma was moved inside, despite this being against the explicit rule to exactly match the original in punctuation.
• American Chemical Society, The ACS Style Guide: Effective Communication of Scientific Information (3rd ed., 2006): Location of closing quotation marks with respect to other punctuation is a style point in which ACS differs from other authorities. In 1978, ACS questioned the traditional practice and recommended a deviation: logical placement. Thus, if the punctuation is part of the quotation, then it should be within the quotation marks; if the punctuation is not part of the quotation, the writer should not mislead the reader by implying that it is. Place closing quotation marks before all punctuation that is not part of the original quotation. Place them after all punctuation that is part of the quotation. The sample solution was stirred briefly with a magnetic “flea”.; Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "The reward of a thing well done is to have done it."
• Very typical example of LQ and UK confusion, found in Webster's PUnctuation Guide (2006, p. 62) "In British usage, the period or comma goes outside the quoted matter whenever the original text did not include the punctuation." But we know from many sources that this is not strictly true for a substantial proportion of British publishers.
• Chambers Guide to Punctuation (Kay Cullen, 1991): Describes LQ but is not insistent on it: As a general rule, punctuation marks that belong to, or are part of, the quoted speech or writing should be kept within the quotation marks; and, punctuation the belongs to the surrounding sentence goes outside .... 'My parents are quite willing', she said, 'to look after the baby for the evening.' Here a pair of bracketing commas has been added to mark of the interruption of the quotation. The commas are not part of the quoted speech, and therefore have been placed outside the quotation marks. When bracketing commas are used in this way, many people like to place the first comma side the first set of quotes .... This may seem illogical, since the commas are not part of the quotation. The advocates of this style say it improves the appearance of the text .... It is really a matter of personal preference which you use, as long as you are consistent throughout any piece of writing.
• Example of British guide advocating non-LQ (and double-quotes): Collins Webster's Easy Learning Grammar and Punctuation (2011, Glasgow: HarperCollins): The words spoken are enclosed in double quotation marks. ... "I've already seen it," John replied." It's also one of the few in print that recommends using single quotation marks for what we call MOS:WAW purposes: The word 'book' can be used as a noun or a verb. This was a common practice that arose on Usenet in the early 1990s or maybe even late 1980s, and became a common part of "internet writing" before the web became ubiquitous, but was generally not picked up by many major style guides that I know of, and seems to have fallen into disuse.
• A weird one is Seely's Oxford A–Z of Grammar and Punctuation, revd. 2nd ed. (2013), which states no rule about it but illustrates both 'Very,' said Mr Datchery without enthusiasm and shortly thereafter Alan Lomax calls the work song a 'spiritual speed-up'. Clearly, the first has replaced the original's period/full-stop with a comma inside the quotation, while the second has not injected the terminal period/stop into that quotation (presumably because no punctuation mark of any kind was present there in the original).
• There are not a lot of Canada-specific works; one of them is Marion Terry's Teaching Grammar & Punctuation in the Twenty-first Century (Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford U. Pr., 2014, with explicitly Canadian text). So much for the idea that TQ is "American" (well, that and it's also commonly found in British fiction, with or without double quotes as the default).

 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:06, 6 January 2024 (UTC); rev'd. 05:51, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Particularly unsightly example

Just encountered this nice example in Wet and messy fetishism of all places:

The word "sploshing" originates from a defunct UK fetish magazine named "Splosh!."

Now eliminated, of course. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 08:08, 19 August 2024 (UTC)