Page "Comparison of American and British English" Paragraph 31

: Hart's Rules and the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors call the British style " new " quoting.

It is also similar to the use of quotation marks in many other languages ( including Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan, Dutch and German ).

A few US professional societies whose professions frequently employ various non-word characters, such as chemistry and computer programming, use the British form in their style guides ( see ACS Style Guide ).

According to the Jargon File, American hackers switched to what they later discovered to be the British quotation system because placing a period inside a quotation mark can change the meaning of data strings that are meant to be typed character-for-character.

( It may be noted that the current American system places periods and commas outside the quotation marks in these cases anyway.