leftyjew

I'm interested in the ideas I was talking about last night with ML relating to what she calls "friend theory".

By the way, a grammar question: We put a phrase or word in quotes when we're treating it as an object in itself, devoid of meaning. E.g.:

I like the way the "pickles" sounds (referring to the word, not the appetizer)
She called roses "love flowers"
"Occasional" is a difficult word to spell

Great... but where do we put the punctuation marks that happen to succeed that phrase? My instinct is that in a true quotation, the punctuation is actually part of the quote, and in a phrase quote it is not. But it never looks right. Here's what I mean:

She told me, "You typed poorly," but I think I typed all right.
She told me you typed "poorly", but I think I typed "all right".

Am I correct? (Note that she's addressing my typing in the first statement and your typing in the second.)
This actually lines up neatly with my practice of adding an "'s" (apostrophe-s) after proper names that end in "s". For example:

"Stevens's house" implies that the house's owner is Stevens
"Steven's house" implies that the house is owned by Steven
"Stevens' house" implies plurality - that either more than one Steven owns the house or perhaps a family named Steven.

What do you all think?