If you have a sharp eye for punctuation, you will notice that I am not following the American rule that requires placing periods and commas inside closing quotation marks. Why? I aim for this site to have an international reach. Besides that, it goes against my mathematical* grain to use the American rule!
Apparently, the American system (which used to be the British standard, too), developed from a type-setting concern: putting the quotation marks last helped keep the small pieces of type with periods and commas from breaking off the end of sentences! The British style emphasizes logic, and places periods and commas based on the meaning of the sentence. Logic, I can live with!
Here are some examples. Both styles do this:
She said, “I heard a fun math song yesterday.”
That makes sense, since her quoted sentence would end with a period if it stood alone.
Brits do this:
I like that song, “Mathematical Pi”.
This is logical. The period is not part of the name of the song.
Americans do this:
I like that song, “Mathematical Pi.”
This is not logical — the period is not part of the song’s title! But I guess the period feels safer with the quotation mark there to keep it from falling off the end of the sentence. My periods will have to be brave, because I cannot bear to punctuate this way!
* In math, you have to keep your punctuation properly nested:
$$\{4 - [8\cdot (5 - 2)] + 3\} \cdot6$$
Notice: No small pieces of type were damaged in the making of this website.