method to my madness...

...a selection from _The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Ed._*:

5.13 The British style of positioning periods and commas in relation to the closing quotation mark is based on the same logic that in the American system governs the placement of question marks and exclamation points: if they belong to the quoted material, they are placed within the closing quotation mark; if they belong to the including sentence as a whole, they are placed after the quotation mark. The British style is strongly advocated by some American language experts. In defense of nearly a century and a half of the American style, however, it may be said that it seems to have been working fairly well and has not resulted in serious miscommunication. Whereas there clearly is some risk with question marks and exclamation points, there seems little likelihood that readers will be misled concerning the period or comma. There may be some risk in such specialized material as textual criticism, but in that case authors and editors may take care to avoid the danger by alternative phrasing or by employing, in this exacting field, the exacting British system. In linguistic and philosophical works, specialized terms are regularly punctuated the British way, along with the use of single quotation marks. With these qualifications, the University of Chicago Press continues to recommend the American style for periods and commas.

Rules 5.20 and 5.28 deal with exclamation points and question marks, respectively, w/r/t quotation marks.

hmmmm... perhaps for consistency's sake, i should start adding an extra "u" to certain words (i.e., colour, rumour, misdemeanour).


* the current version of the CMS is the 15th ed., but the copy that i own is the 14th.