A WORD, PLEASE:No argument on these rules

In American English, periods and commas always go inside the quotation marks. Always. Other punctuation marks follow different rules, as you’ll see in a minute. But periods and commas are simple.

It’s just a style thing — no better or worse than the British style, which has different rules. But unlike most other usage guidelines that are hotly debated, this one has near universal support. The “Associated Press Stylebook,” which governs most newspaper writing, and the “Chicago Manual of Style,” which governs book writing, agree, along with every other American usage book I’ve seen: Periods and commas go inside quotation marks.

This is true whether you’re quoting someone: Martha Wash said, “It’s rainin’ men.” It’s true whether you’re using quotation marks to denote a title of a work: Martha Wash is one of the Weather Girls who sang the ‘70s hit, “It’s Raining Men.” And it’s true even when using quotation marks just to be ironic or sarcastic: Gee, June, that reference is really “fresh.”

Commas seem to create more confusion than periods. I watch “Lost,” “The Simpsons” and “Dance Fever.” Notice that the comma after “Lost” goes inside the quotation marks even though it’s not part of the quoted matter.

People get confused, in part, because they see question marks and exclamation points outside the quotation marks. They see stuff like: Have you read “Leaves of Grass”? They figure there must be some consistency to the rules — that, since the question mark sometimes goes outside, the comma must, too. Not so.

Question marks and exclamation points don’t have an “always” rule. For them, it depends on whether they apply to the quoted matter. Bob asked, “Do you want to come along?” Did Bob say, “Come along”? In the first example, the question mark refers to the stuff inside the quotation marks. So it goes inside the quotation marks. But in the second example, the quoted stuff isn’t a question. It’s within a larger question. And that’s why its question mark goes outside.

I’m thrilled that Betty said, “Hi”! I’m less thrilled that Betty screamed, “I hate you!”

Colons and semicolons also have their own rule: They always go outside of quotation marks. But if you’re the type of person who can only retain two new rules at a time, this is the one to forget. It almost never comes up.

Ted likes Steven Pressfield, who wrote “Gates of Fire”; George R.R. Martin, who wrote “A Feast of Crows”; and Judy Blume, which is the one he won’t admit to.

Don’t confuse quotation mark rules with the rules for parentheses. They’re different. With parentheses, placement of the period has to do with whether the parenthetical matter is a free-standing sentence.

These rules are easy (once you know them). Reading this column can help. (You can bet that we’ll go over this again soon.)

In the first example, the parenthetical stuff is squeezed into the larger sentence. That’s why the period comes after. But in the second example, the parenthetical stuff is its own sentence. So it gets its own period.

So, yes, the rules are inconsistent. But with a little practice, they can become “second nature.”