Is it logical?
In an interesting article on Slate, author Ben Yagoda advocates for the use of “logical punctuation” — an English writing style in which punctuation is placed outside of quotations and one generally used everywhere but America. American English writing is driven by aesthetics, he argues, while logical style is driven by technical correctness. Yagoda increasingly favors the technical, others hold onto aesthetics. I’m not sure it much matters.
Rules for written language are by definition arbitrary. There is nothing inherently more logical in “logical punctuation” than there is in the American form because they’re both based on approximations of spoken language. But within the general rules of style, I understand how the “outside” approach could be seen as more accurate and therefore more clear.
Personally, I favor aesthetics in prose. I care less for rules, whatever they may be. In general I believe strict adherence to rules of grammar and punctuation often has the effect of drawing attention to the writing itself rather than engaging the reader.
For example, I don’t think it’s useful or necessary to italicize the names of books, magazines, or movies. Capitalization does enough to set them apart within the context of a sentence. I needn’t write “in a recent Los Angeles Times article” when “in a recent Los Angeles Times article” has the same affect and, in my opinion, looks better. By any convention this approach is wrong, but I’m less concerned with correctness than I am with readability.
Similarly, to me a punctuation mark outside of a quote draws unnecessary attention to itself and distracts from the content of the sentence. It’s also more visually appealing to place punctuation inside quotation marks because it inspires more fluidity, eliminating excess white space and more seamlessly connecting to what follows.
But that is just my opinion. In the end, what I think is important is to understand the rules of grammar and punctuation so that you can make your own reasoned decisions as to how to apply them and when. Consistency is what’s vital.
