MT Quotes

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2/96, from Mary Morken:
Often doctors dictate something like this, "The patient stated the voices were telling me to kill myself," with inconsistent use of pronouns. This should be transcribed either as "The patient stated the voices were telling [her] to kill [herself]," or "The patient stated, '[The voices] were telling me to kill myself.'"

From Simon and Schuster's Handbook for Writers:
"When you work quoted words into your own sentences, you may have to change a word or two to make the quoted words fit into the structure of your sentence. Enclose any changes...explanations and clarifications..."
"This sort of information [about personal space] seems trivial, but it does affect international understanding. If you find a mistake in a quote, you can add [sic] to show the mistake is not yours."

Quotation Marks and Punctuation
From Usenet discussion, 9/95
Summary of Rules for Single and Double Quotation Marks:
Q marks go outside commas and periods. Q marks go inside colons and semicolons. Q marks go inside or outside question marks, exclamation points, parentheses and dashes, depending upon which part of the sentence they refer to. Q marks used for inches goes inside all punctuation.

Documentation:
According to AAMT BOS, a question mark goes inside the ending quotation marks if it is a question. A question mark should never be combined with a period. The question mark goes outside if the quoted part of the sentence is not a question.

Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 5th ed., states that American usage puts commas and periods inside, question marks and exclamation points in or out depending on which part of the sentence they pertain to, and semicolons and colons outside.

American Medical Association Manual of Style, 8th ed., Williams & Wilkins, 1989, ISBN: 0-683-04351-X: States the same as Turabian, adds dashes go in or out depending on which part of the sentence they pertain to.

Medical Transcription Guide: Do's and Don'ts. Fordney and Diehl. ISBN: 0-7216-3798-1. Agrees with the above.

Harbrace College Handbook. Hodges and Whitten. 6th ed. ISBN: 0-15-531810-1. Agrees with the above and calls them "arbitrary printers' rules."

The Elements of Grammar also agrees. Shertz. ISBN: 0-02-015440-2

All these sources also agree with the above:
The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage: a Desk Book of Guidelines for Writers and Editors; NY Times Book Co., 1982. Lewis Jordan. ISBN 0812963164
Government Printing Office Style Manual,
The Chicago Manual of Style: The Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and Publishers, 14 ed. 1993. ISBN 0-226-10389-7
MLA Style Manual, Modern Language Association of America, 4th ed. 1985. Walter Achtert. ISBN 0873521366
Random House Manual of Style
New York Public Library Manual of Style

The new Gregg Manual also agrees. Also states that all rules apply the same to single quote marks. If the ending of a sentence with a quote at the end requires two of the same punctuation, only one is used inside the quotation mark. Parentheses follow the same rule as question marks. It also states that some Americans use the British rule which is that all punctuation goes outside the quote marks.

From The Chicago Manual of Style:
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.
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