Nancy,

I think E. B. would say that it's acceptable to put punctuation outside of quotation marks in the rare case when it is necessary to the substance of the sentence. In this case, it's important to differentiate between the user entering "Thoma" or "Thoma."

>I'm in a grammar quandry. Good grammar would have me write:
>
>...you could enter "Thoma." But the _word_ is "Thoma" so I think I should write "Thoma". But the ghost of my 6th grade english teacher (Miss Fisk) keeps whacking me on the head.
>
>I know: this is totally unimportant. < shrug >