Periods and commas go inside closing quotation marks.
“Don’t compromise yourself,” said Janis Joplin. “You are all you’ve got.”
Colons, semicolons, and footnote numbers go outside closing quotation marks.
I felt one emotion after finishing “Eveline”: sorrow.
Tragedy is defined by Aristotle as “an imitation of an action that is serious and of a certain magnitude.”1
Question marks, exclamation points, and dashes go inside if they are part of the quoted material, outside if they are not.
PART OF THE QUOTATION
The cashier asked, “Would you like to supersize that?”
NOT PART OF THE QUOTATION
What is the theme of “The Birth-Mark”?