Which is the correct sentence?

[tanelaine]

Which sentence is correct: the one with one period of the other with two?

1. The sentence is "We must study hard to attain good results.".

2. The sentence is "We must study hard to attain good results."

Thanks.

[starone]

Why can't you put two, one inside to end the sentence in the quotation and one outside to end the complete sentence? Just asking. :-) Not trying to put the cat among the pigeons, honest!

[jno]

you can if you want, Starbuckone (there's no law), but it will look odd because you'll be the only person in the language doing it.

I'm about as American as Kingsley Amis.

[RATTER15]

Does it really matter? :-)

[heathfield]

Strange, Chris. In my days at primary school, (in Scotland), the words 'period' and 'full stop' were used indiscriminately.

[Quizmonster]

No, Star, we don't do that. Both question marks and exclamation marks, as well as full stops themselves, contain a full stop. Thus, if the quote ends with a question mark, for example, that effectively ends the sentence as a whole; we do not add a further one to end the sentence itself.
Examples...
1. When I spoke to him, President Kennedy asked, "Is this Berlin?"
No full stop is then used OUTSIDE the quotation marks to indicate the sentence-end.
2. As I listened, I heard President Kennedy say, "Ich bin ein Berliner."
(As above, no second full stop.)

[Eddie-R]

Neither, it should be: "We must study hard to attain good results".

[boxtops]

I agree with Eddie - and in QMs' answer, I would have said

I heard P/Kennedy say "Ich bin ein Berliner".

[pips1]

Oohh my head hurts!

[Quizmonster]

"If an extract ends with a point or exclamation or interrogation sign, let that point be included BEFORE (my capitals) the closing quotation mark."

The above is quoted directly from Fowler's Modern English Usage and is based on Hart's Rules and the Oxford University Press's house style. These are three pretty authoritative sources on the use of English!

Both extracts from Eddie-R and Boxtops above perfectly clearly end with a point...ie a full stop/period...so why on earth would these points come OUTSIDE the quote-marks?

Anyone is, of course, free to punctuate anything however they like as already suggested earlier, but if you do that in odd ways, you must expect people who stick to the "norm" to assume you are just wrong!

[jno]

I'm surprised to find dissension here - I agree with Quizmonster and thought it was all very well established.

But with so many educated ABers disagreeing, maybe people are being taught differently in schools these days.

[DTCwordfan]

I was taught that full stops/periods come inside the speech marks. So, "We must study hard to attain good results."

Daisy was correct to use the comma before the quotation; therefore, I heard P/Kennedy say, "Ich bin ein Berliner."

I have seen people use colons to indicate speech, which is my Ed's preference, more with a paragraph separation for speech lines, as in

She leant forward on her elbows and commented:

"What a load of twaddle grammar throws up."

(note here the use of leant - the Americans tend to use leaned).