Punctuation after quotations

In American English (and in some cases for British English), punctuation following a bit of quoted text is traditionally placed  inside  the quotation. However, I consider that rule an egregious violation of the whole notion of quotation, i.e. an obvious bug in the English language. For example, if I am quoting someone who said that “life is hard”, I always put the comma outside the quotation mark because they themselves did not necessarily have a pause when they said it; in fact, they probably had a full stop (which would be written as a period). Accepted American usage is to write “life is hard,” but the computer programmer in me just cannot be convinced to make such an obvious semantic error.


Reference:

Dr. James A. Bednar. Tips for Academic Writing and Other Formal Writing

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