Periods, commas, and closing quotation marks

John P. McCaskey
Where is documentation on how to control whether and when a comma or period is rendered before or after a closing quotation mark?

I believe this involves a flag in the CSL and locale settings somewhere (in Zotero? in the word preocessor? in the CSL?).

I have found very old discussions in the forum, but no current statement about what settings need to be set, what each does, and how they interact.

Thanks to anyone who can provide some insight!
  • adamsmith
    It's set by
    <locale><style-options punctuation-in-quote="true"/></locale> in the locale or the CSL file.
    (as the name suggests, true puts both comma and period inside quotation marks, false puts them outside).
  • John P. McCaskey
    edited September 28, 2023
    What determines which locale file is active?

    Why in a <citation>, with <layout suffix="." delimiter=", "> would a citation with three items be formatted (with CMoS 17) like this:
    Galen, “My own books”, Fumerton, “Logic”, Grafton, “Ancient Works.”
    with the delimiter commas outside the quotation marks and the suffix period inside?
  • adamsmith
    Yeah, that shouldn't look that way ever. So this is CMoS with a modified citation section, or otherwise modified too?
  • John P. McCaskey
    No other mods. Select three items, open the Style Editor, select CMoS (note), set language to English (US), change <layout suffix="." delimiter="; "> to <layout suffix="." delimiter=", "> in <citation>, and I get delimiting commas outside the closing quotation marks but the suffix period inside.
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