Barbelith Underground > Conversation > Fucking fucking fucking quotation marks fucking AAAARGH

Here ya go, kids. Knock yourselves out.

For what it's worth, I was taught in college that America and the UK had different rules for commas & full stops within quotations.

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Fowler (1908):
There are single and double quotation marks, and, apart from minor peculiarities, two ways of utilizing the variety. The prevailing one is to use double marks for most purposes, and single ones for quotations within quotations, as:—"Well, so he said to me 'What do you mean by it?' and I said 'I didn't mean anything'". Some of those who follow this system also use the single marks for isolated words, short phrases, and anything that can hardly be called a formal quotation; this avoids giving much emphasis to such expressions, which is an advantage. The more logical method is that adopted, for instance, by the Oxford University Press, of reserving the double marks exclusively for quotations within quotations. Besides the loss of the useful degrees in emphasis (sure, however, to be inconsistently utilized), there is a certain lack of full-dress effect about important quotations when given this way; but that is probably a mere matter of habituation. It should be mentioned that most of the quoted quotations in this section had originally the double marks, but have been altered to suit the more logical method; and the unpleasantness of the needless quotation marks with which we started has so been slightly toned down.

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The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (1993):

A key problem with quotation marks is which other marks of punctuation go inside the closing quotation mark(s) and which belong outside. In the United States, most stylebooks and most editors follow these rules: periods and commas belong inside, colons and semicolons outside. Other marks—question mark, dash, and exclamation point, for example—go inside when they belong with the quoted material, outside when they belong to the main sentence. British editorial conventions differ. 3
When quoting a long passage of two or more paragraphs, the usual procedure in written American English is to use no quotation marks and instead to set off the entire passage of quoted matter by indenting it. If you decide to use quotation marks instead, however, the usual procedure is to begin each paragraph of the long quotation with quotation marks but to use a closing quotation mark only at the end of the final sentence in the quoted passage. In any event, use only one of these methods with any given quotation. See also POETRY. 4
British publishers frequently use single quotation marks (opening ‘ and closing ’ ) where Americans use double quotation marks. In American writing, however, single quotation marks are restricted mainly to enclosing a quotation within a quotation: The dealer said, “I’m sorry, I thought you said ‘I pass.’” Note that a period goes inside both final quotation marks when the two quotations end together.

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Note that Fowler admits that his "more logical" way isn't standard usage.