Punctuation Question

[desoto_hia873]

The American style of punctuation puts pretty much all punctuation inside quotation marks. I know there are occasional exceptions, though. Where would you put the colon in this example?

He wrote "to all those worthy women who have any desire to live in Newfoundland, specially to the modest and discreet gentlewoman Mistress Mason wife to Captaine Mason who lived there divers yeeres": (Poem text begins here.)

ETA: Answered!

Comments

[bookishwench.livejournal.com]

Colons and semicolons always go outside of quotation marks unless they are part of the quotation itself.

[desoto-hia873.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[that_mireille]

What I was taught was:

--Commas and periods *always* go inside quotation marks
--Colons and semicolons *always* go outside quotation marks (unless they're part of the quotation, but as a rule, you'd stop the quotation before the punctuation)
--Question marks and exclamation marks go inside the quotation marks if the quoted material is the question/exclamation, and outside if the whole sentence (not just the quotation) is the question/exclamation.

[desoto-hia873.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad my flist is full of writers. :-) Thanks!