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In all major forms of English, question marks, exclamation marks, semicolons, and any other punctuation (with the possible exceptions of periods and commas, as explained in the sections below) are placed inside or outside the closing quotation mark depending on whether they are part of the quoted material. [25]
Quotation marks [A] are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to identify direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the same glyph. [3] Quotation marks have a variety of forms in different languages and in different media.
(The very quote is being questioned, so the question mark belongs outside; any punctuation at the end of the original quote is omitted.) When a quoted sentence fragment ends in a period, some judgment is required: if the fragment communicates a complete sentence, the period can be placed inside.
Question mark: Inverted question mark, Interrobang “ ” " " ‘ ’ ' ' Quotation marks: Apostrophe, Ditto, Guillemets, Prime: Inch, Second ® Registered trademark symbol: Trademark symbol ※ Reference mark: Asterisk, Dagger: Footnote ¤ Scarab (non-Unicode name) ('Scarab' is an informal name for the generic currency sign) § Section sign ...
Further nesting (quote-within-a-quote-within-a-quote) reverts to the primary marks, and so forth. Question marks, exclamation points, semicolons and colons are placed inside the quotation marks when they apply only to the quoted material; if they syntactically apply to the sentence containing or introducing the material, they are placed outside ...
Not always true. In fact, the example you give earlier for "logical" style (putting the exclamation mark inside of the quotation mark only if it relates to the item inside the quotes) is the standard for North America too for things like exclamation marks and, especially, question marks.
In English, the question mark typically occurs at the end of a sentence, where it replaces the full stop (period). However, the question mark may also occur at the end of a clause or phrase, where it replaces the comma (see also Question comma):
In British English, punctuation marks such as full stops and commas are placed inside the quotation mark only if they are part of what is being quoted, and placed outside the closing quotation mark if part of the containing sentence. In American English, however, such punctuation is generally placed inside the closing quotation mark regardless.