American & British English Period Differences

When a quotation mark appears at the end of a sentence, the full stop is placed before it in American English, but at the end of the sentence in British English.

For example:

In American English the full stop appears inside "the quotation."
In British English the full stop appears outside "the quotation".

An exception in the American rule is if the placing of the full stop inside the quote will lead to ambiguity, for example in describing commands to be typed into a computer:

At the prompt type "ls -lad".

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