Quotation Marks with Other Punctuation

Always put commas and periods inside the closing quotation marks, even when the end punctuation is not part of the quoted material. Consider the following example:

After I read “Song of the Open Road,” I had a new appreciation for Whitman and the transcendentalists.

Remember that semicolons and colons belong outside the closing quotation marks, as in the following example:

Muhammad Ali always called himself “the greatest”: his performance lived up to his boast.

Which sentence is correct? While a steel band played its version of “Jamaica Farewell”, the waiter served the first course of our authentic island dinner. The restaurant advertised its menu as “a colorful and flavorful fusion of Caribbean and French cuisine”; the food surpassed that description and our expectations.