Grammatical Conundrum: ." or ". or .".

I always either use ." or "., never .". - it largely depends on which order I happen to hit the keys in. Occasionally it's >" :p
 
desires said:
All three of these are to be considered the same sentence with the same meaning and all acceptable ways of writing it down.

Jack said "I hate Firefox, Chrome is better."

Jack said "I hate Firefox, Chrome is better".

Jack said "I hate Firefox, Chrome is better.".

All are correct and there is no solid answer to this,
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There is and it's the first one. Yes, there should be a comma before 'said'.
 
Maccy said:
First one. And technically a comma after 'said' as others have mentioned.
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Actually it's a colon before speech. Since what Jack said is a complete sentence, the full stop goes inside the inverted commas. Correctly there it is would be:


Jack said: "I hate Firefox, Chrome is better."
 
Following a form of to say, however, you'll almost always need a comma:

My father always said, "Be careful what you wish for."
If the quoted speech follows an independent clause yet could be part of the same sentence, use a colon to set off the quoted language:

My mother's favorite quote was from Shakespeare: "This above all, to thine own self be true."

When an attribution of speech comes in the middle of quoted language, set it apart as you would any parenthetical element:

"I don't care," she said, "what you think about it."
Be careful, though, to begin a new sentence after the attribution if sense calls for it:

"I don't care," she said. "What do you think?"
Convention normally insists that a new paragraph begins with each change of speaker:

"I don't care what you think anymore," she said, jauntily tossing back her hair and looking askance at Edward.
"What do you mean?" he replied.
"What do you mean, 'What do I mean?'" Alberta sniffed. She was becoming impatient and wished that she were elsewhere.
"You know darn well what I mean!" Edward huffed.
"Have it your way," Alberta added, "if that's how you feel."
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first link I could find
 
FoxEye said:
Jack said, "I hate Firefox; Chrome is better."

Comma after "said". Terminating period before double quotes. Semicolon after "Firefox".
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This.

I believe it is Americans who put the final period outside of the last quotation mark, which does make some sense but is not British English.
 
I'd say it depends on the context you are reading it in. If you read it in a book, then what Jack is saying is a full sentence and it should be terminated accordingly before the speech marks.

Jack said: "I hate Firefox; Chrome is better."

However, if I said on these forums, that my friend Jack said that, then we can't be sure that Jack didn't say "I hate Firefox; Chrome is betterI'mabigfathomo", and I've simply taken an excerpt from what he said. Instead, the focus of ending the sentence is on what *I* am saying, and not what Jack is saying, so it should be:

Jack said: "I hate Firefox; Chrome is better".

I'm unsure on two full stops, that could possibly apply if I knew Jack had finished his sentence there, and it's me saying the sentence.
 
You'll never see it written with a colon in book.

Jack said: "blah blah blah."

Will always be written as

Jack said, "blah blah blah."

You might see a colon in script:

Jack: blah blah blah
Grace: rabble rabble
Dog: woof
 
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