[Steve_Seattle]

"The period belongs OUTSIDE the quotes"

You touch on a subject that has always troubled me - the rules for placing punctuation marks inside or outside of quotes. My research tells me that standard American and British usage are different, and the British usage seems more logical to me. (If I recall correctly, the British are more consistent in putting the punctuation marks OUTSIDE of the quoted word or text.)

[GilesB]

The period ends the sentence - the quote was a phrase extracted from a sentence. The end of the sentence was not within the quote - hence, the period outside the quote. If the quote was the end of a sentence, the period would stay inside the quote, and no further period is required. A sentence could actually be quoted in the middle of another sentence - in that case, the complete-sentence quotation would contain a period and another period at the end of the larger, containing sentence.

At least, that’s how I was taught.