He said that the car was "beautifully scratched." He said that the car was "beautifully scratched".
Where should the full stop be?
The difference is in the placement of the full stop and usage of quotes. Out of these four, which is correct?
If the whole sentence was in the quotes then the closing quote would come after the full stop, e.g:
"He said that the car was pretty."
However, in this case, it's only the last word in the quotes, so the correct form as far as I'm concerned is
He said that the car was "pretty".
I'm no expert on the use of single or double quotes but presuming that in the context here the person is being quoted directly I'd probably choose double quotes.
I think it will be agreed that this is a matter of either your style guide or your own stylistic preference.
Personally, I use double quotes (") for using words literally, etc. and single quotes (') for quotes.
In America, double quotes seem to be used for both, whereas Australia (and possibly Britain) tends to use the reverse of my style.
As for the full stop, I like to have it outside of the quotation marks if it is not part of the quote.
Thus, I would write your sentence like this:
He said the car was 'pretty'.
