Punctuation two styles differ mainly in the way in which they handle quotation marks, particularly in conjunction with other punctuation marks. In British English, punctuation such as periods and commas are placed outside the closing quotation mark; in American English, however, punctuation is placed inside the closing quotation mark. This rule varies for other punctuation marks; for example, American English follows the British English rule when it comes to semicolons, colons, question marks, and exclamation points. Other languages of Europe use much the same punctuation as English. The similarity is so strong that the few variations may confuse a native English
Punctuation of English "British" (typically used in the UK, Ireland, and most of the Commonwealth of Nations) and "American" (also common in Canada and places with a strong American influence on local English, as in the Philippines). These two styles differ mainly in the way in which they handle quotation marks with adjacent punctuation, and the use or omission of the full point (period) with contraction abbreviations. The terms "open" and "closed punctuation" have been applied to minimizing versus comprehensively including punctuation, respectively, aside from any dialectal trends. Closed punctuation is used in scholarly, literary, general business, and "everyday" writing. Open style dominates