American & British differences

The comma and the quotation mark pairing can be used in several ways. In American English, the comma is to be included inside a quote (if a quote is present inside a sentence), no matter what the circumstances. For example:

My mother gave me the nickname “Johnny Boy,” which really made me angry.

However, in British English, punctuation is only placed within inverted commas if it is part of what is being quoted or referred to. Thus:

My mother gave me the nickname “Johnny Boy”, which really made me angry.

Barbara Child claims that in American English there is a trend toward a decreased use of the comma. (Child, 1992, p. 398) Lynne Truss says that this is equally true in the UK, and has been a slow, steady trend for at least a century:

Nowadays… A passage peppered with commas - which in the past would have indicated painstaking and authoritative editorial attention - smacks simply of no backbone. People who put in all the commas betray themselves as moral weaklings with empty lives and out-of-date reference books. (Truss, 2004, p. 97-98)

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