Learn English – When should end punctuation go inside quotes

In books, you often see the italics used to distinguish when something is said mentally, instead of out loud. Sometimes italics are also used for flashbacks.

In advertising, I suppose you could use italics to make people ponder the quote more, irrespective of whether the quote is said out loud, or only thought internally.

Oakland A's fan: This is going to be your year.

In the first of your two examples, the first part ("A man said the other day") and the second part ("Why are all the trees orange?") get treated "evenly" by the human eye, and the quotes "clutter" the visual.

In the second example, the eyes are drawn toward the italics, and the first part seems more incidental. I can see why advertisers would prefer this format.

In general, I think the quote should begin with a capital letter. As I showed in my example, there should be punctuation before the "quote" – but it needn't always be a comma.

In your first query, the question mark clearly does not belong to the euphemism, so it should not appear inside its quotes:

“Why should I ever hear about this... ‘agency’?”

In your second query, you can dispense with the exclamation mark. While that does go with the word Stop, it isn’t heard and doesn’t need to be quoted. And the final full stop isn’t needed either — you’ve already conceded that right at the start.

He screwed his eyebrows, and asked, “Are you sure you heard ‘Stop’?”

Punctuation is only there to assist understanding. Too much clouds the meaning because although it might be strictly correct, it requires working out! Use enough to make the meaning clear without undue effort sorting through it all.