I saw it in JD Roth's post today. He ended a sentence with the punctuation outside of the quotes. It's a beautiful thing, and it's something I have seen a few times already here on the forums. No one has ever explicitly agreed with me on a few points though, and I'd like to at least get a discussion going about why quotes are the way they are or how the rules could be changed.
I'll explain myself: when a question is inserted mid-sentence, it's conventional to end it with a comma. Consider:
"You did buy groceries," she wondered.
Now how nebulous is that? If we could just insert the proper punctuation so we know exactly what is being quoted, there wouldn't be any ambiguity. Now consider if I was to incorporate that sentence into a sentence of my own. For example if I used the example "'You did buy groceries,' she wondered," I'm now stuck with two commas, double quotes, and single quotes, and nowhere else to go. You can't nest any further with the current system.
I hope I've at least got someone laughing at this point. Improvements can be made! With a simpler system that doesn't use the freakin' commas or the single quotes, you can even embellish the above quote to become ""You did buy 'Mustachian' groceries?" she wondered." Also, put the question mark in the quotes and don't put a freakin' comma, because it wouldn't be there in the first place.
The idea extends further to include even double punctuation (or worse, as needed). He exclaimed "I hate your ridiculous spending with a fiery passion!". The period ends the sentence, and the exclamation ends the quote, and everything's good. And no freaking comma to introduce the quote, because all anyone needs is a quote to know that a quote's coming.
You may think, "Hey, it doesn't matter if it's just a word in quotes at the end of a sentence, right?". Wrong. If you're quoting a single-word sentence, then end it with a period, and add the period for the other sentence it's within after it. "They just said "Leave."." deteriorates to "They just said, 'Leave,'" with the current system, and it's an absolute joke.
I'm posting just to see if anyone else abhors the counterintuitive rules they still teach kids on a daily basis. If the internet has taught me anything, no one ever has a completely unique point of view. So let me hear it! Few people around here don't question the given 'rules', so I'm sure someone's got something interesting to add.
Edited: Changed "hear" to "here".