Final 3 British Quotation Marks Questions

[frogboxer]

Per British style, are these three correctly punctuated? I believe that the first sentence in each pair is correct, do you?

•Frank said, 'I heard Mike say, "Beverly needs to get a life!" '
•Frank said, 'I heard Mike say, "Beverly needs to get a life"!'


•Frank said, 'I heard Mike ask, "Will Beverly retire soon?" '
•Frank said, 'I heard Mike ask, "Will Beverly retire soon"?'


•Frank said, 'I heard Mike say, "Beverly will retire on Monday".'
•Frank said, 'I heard Mike say, "Beverly will retire on Monday." '

Thanks

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[emsr2d2]

Are these questions that you are setting, or you're answering for some kind of test?

 

[frogboxer]

No test. I read the house rules. These are questions I concocted because I'm trying to understand British quotation marks and punctuation (very confusing). I live in America, and the 'British way' is starting to gain momentum over here. Could you kindly help me with those?

 

[frogboxer]

There aren't a whole lot of books that answer these. I know that the first sentence in the first pair is correct with the full stop outside the ending quote mark, followed by the single quote mark (".').

Wasn't sure, though, if the same logic applied to the exclamation point and question mark. It seems as though the period in the first example would go inside because it's part of the quoted material that somebody else had said. But I'm told 'no'.

Would the same apply, then, to the '!' and '?' - i.e. they both fall outside the ending quote marks as well? If so, the logic doesn't make much sense to me.

 

[Raymott]

The first variant is correct in each case. It's Mike who's making the exclamation or question, not Frank (I).

 

[Rover_KE]

I disagree. In the third case the second variant is correct. The full stop ends Mike's sentence, as the exclamation mark/question mark did before. (And we don't need another full stop outside the quotation marks.)

Rover