You're right, American English keeps punctuation inside the quotes, whereas British English places the punctuation outside of them. But as with most rules in English, there's an exception. When placing punctuation inside the quotes could cause confusion, it can be placed outside. Where I've seen this most often is in technology textbooks, where a sentence might read something like this: When prompted for a disk location, enter "Z:\Program files\Applications".

In the above sentence the period stays outside the quotes to avoid implying that the period should also be typed. Hope this helps! --Sarah Hill, San Francisco, CA

There is a rule among technical writers and editors, which may have found its way into the general realm of book editing. When describing an item that appears on a computer screen, technical writers have to be sure they put in quotation marks only the words the user sees. For example, if a warning message, "Hard Disk Failure", appears on the screen, and the writer includes this phrase in his or her computer documentation, the writer never includes the comma within the quotes.

For example, if the writer documents the text in the following way: "'Disk Failure', a fatal message, appears." the comma, if it were included in the quotation marks would erroneously appear to be a part of the message that appears on the screen.--David Nollman

The apostrophe shows possession. In words ending in "s" it is positioned as 's after the final s. For example, the Jones family owns an automobile; therefore, it is the Jones's automobile. --Lotte Popovic

I believe that Strunk and White answer this question in The Elements of Style: "Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's. Follow this rule whatever the final consonant." In your example, 'AMS's services' would be correct. --Ezra Adams, Episcopal Day School, Augusta, GA

Here are three apostrophe rules that I think will answer your question:

Rule 1. Use an apostrophe and an s ('s) to form the possessive of a singular noun, e.g. girl's or James's.

Rule 2. Use an apostrophe and s ('s) to form the possessive of a plural noun that does not end in s, e.g. men's or geese's.

Rule 3. Use an apostrophe alone to form the possessive of a plural noun that ends in s, e.g. boys' or judges'

--Mary Berry, Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD

You get to decide how much to read before writing. To prevent feeling so overwhelmed, try writing before you gather information, asking yourself how much you know about the subject and what information you're looking for. Write again as you sift information; an annotated bibliography can be especially helpful to briefly summarize and assess how a source would contribute to the project. Writing early and often may also help you engage the texts so your writing focuses on your reasons for the selected information. --James Black, Susquehanna University

Based on my own experience, similar to yours, I decided that my 11-13 year olds deserved a fair start as to how to go about research and devised a framework for them to fill in with whatever method suited them.

The basic tenet was to teach them that in a well written text, the first sentence of each paragraph should contain the keyword/s or keyphrase of the balance of the subject content and that if it was irrelevant to their particular topic, to skip it. This was of particular help to the 'slower' readers. Some found that it was easier to photostat and highlight what they needed.

To start them off, I insisted that they refer to a general reference book (for eg an encyclopaedia) to get a broad overview of the topic and to establish beginning, middle and end views. The next step was to get dictionary definitions for new terminology.

Thereafter, the real work began and I limited them to using no more than three references at a time to prevent overload and confusion. This worked extremely well. They then applied the keyword principle to the next set of references--after identifying the direction they wanted their research to go in, so, in effect, they were now looking for more indepth information on particular aspects of their research. Those who were quicker off the mark sometimes went in to two or three sets of references on the same topic before branching out to flesh out their research assignment.

There were other significant spin-offs from this method. Amongst them was organization--both of self and of the data. Detailing of the bibliographies (and websites) also became ingrained. By using keywords and comparing the information of only three texts, it was far easier to paraphrase and thus avoid plagiarism. I also encouraged them to experiment with flow charts, spider charts and graphics (mindmaps etc) as part of the planning process. These 'hooks,' as part of the learning process, were later easily applied to their study methods, where they also learned the use of mnemonics and acronyms.

I only had thirty minutes every second week to impart this training and at the time wondered on the impact of its import on these youngsters. Three years later I got my first feedback. Some learners had diligently applied the methods I had 'taught' from the word go with very satisfactory results. Others had, at the time of my teaching, failed to see the relevance and only later, as they matured, had they recalled the basics and started applying them, also successfully.--Glenda Irvine, Western Cape - retired teacher