“I love trouble and everything that goes with it,” I heard him say.
is correct. However, in this type of quotation, use of the comma does also depend on the construction of the second part of the sentence. If it were worded like this:
He said, “I love trouble and everything that goes with it” before he ran out of the room.
then the comma wouldn’t be necessary.
I do want to say again that the British punctuation style is sometimes different from American English. I’m not sure in this particular case; you may be doing it right. I’d have to check a British reference book.
As a follow up to the OP - it’s (!) said that the reason “its” doesn’t take an apostrophe is that the possessive form of the pronoun just doesn’t - “hers, his, theirs”. What about “one’s” then? Is this just another “exception” we have to live with in English?
Concerning the “rule” that punctuation always goes inside the quotes, I have a few problems with it:
It defies logic. If I’m quoting something that doesn’t itself include the punctuation, why should the puctuation appear inside the quotes?
There is this “rule” in the US, but in the rest of the English-speaking world, punctuation goes where it logically makes sense.
The standard rule in the US is that periods and commas always go inside the quotes, but exclamation points and question marks go where they logically make sense, and colons and semicolons always go outside the quotes. This is contrived and difficult to remember for a non-native english speaker (especially who learned English in the British English style).
It’s inaccurate. I often send people instructions for computers. If I tell you to enter the command “chmod 755 *.cgi,” do you actually enter the comma? You shouldn’t, because the command wouldn’t work.
The only reason it’s used (IIRC) is that some typographer a long time ago decided it looks neater with the periods and commas inside the quote.
This rule is destined for the dustbin of grammar. If were typesetting a book for mainly US distribution I would likely use it. But when reading posts on usenet or the web, keep in mind that the poster might be outside the US and be using the correct rules for his area.
Ah! This would only follow if all illogical rules in English grammar ended up in the dustbin, but as you will no doubt agree, this is hardly true.
Arguing that a rule of English grammar is wrong because it’s illogical is like arguing that George W. Bush will never be president because he’s too stoopid: all too true, but that and a quarter won’t even buy you a first-class stamp.
Um, isn’t there supposed to be a comma at the end of the quotation, because the sentence has two independent clauses?
I think a sentence that would illustrate the point is
He said that he loves trouble “and everything that goes with it” before the bomb dropped on him.
I haven’t been reading the SDMB for that long, and this thread (along with a few others on similar topics) is restoring my faith that I am not a lone voice crying in the grammatical wilderness.
Since both clauses of the sentence are main clauses (i.e., the portion of the sentence after but contains a subject and a verb), there should be a comma to the left of the closing quotation mark.