I often find myself torn when it comes to punctuations and quotation marks. Should the question mark, exclamation mark or period come before or after the closing quotation marks? Therefore, "Would it be correct this way," or "Would it be better off this way"? I've seen it both ways so now I'm confused (and missing my Language Arts teacher). Help me stop doubting myself

Thank you.

Hi,

Well, it depends! In American English, the comma and the period (full stop) is always within the closing quotation marks.

In British English, the comma is usually within the quotation marks in a sentence like this:

" I think so," Nanna replied.

However, in a BE sentence like this the comma is outside the quotation marks. 

I dislike the word 'extremist', and never use it.

While in AME, the comma is within and with double quotation marks.

I dislike the word "extremist," and never use it.

And, of course, there are numerous exceptions.

Nanna

Nanna is mostly right.  In BE it is more usual for the comma to be outside the quotation marks, unless these are enclosing a complete sentence embedded in a larger one, viz.:

'I refrain from using the word "sociopath", which carries an unfriendly connotation.'

'I cannot abide the promiscuous use of the word "sociopath" at all,' said Scott with a grimace.

Re question and exclamation marks (and colon and semicolon): first 2 always inside, second 2 always outside:

"Why don't you come to Ribe sometime?" asked Nanna.

"But I've been there already!" Scott replied.

BE uses double quotation marks more often than AE uses the single marks, but it is incorrect to say that one is BE and the other AE.  It depends on the publisher, and the epoch.

"Hope this helps," said Scott, guileless.

"It does!" Answered Ouadoud, before the arts teacher comes back.

You didn't tell us if there's automatically a capital letter after the exclamation mark.

"What!" her grand mother exclaimed, when Nanna shouted into her ear.

Never a with capital...unless of course you reverse the order and use your name; a proper noun is by definition always with initial capital:

"It does!" Ouadoud exclaimed.

"Aha!" said Virginia. "Now you know," said her friend.

When I was at school in England many years ago we were taught that a comma went outside the inverted commas to separate the speech from the rest of the sentence, but an exclamation or question mark went INSIDE the inverted commas because these denote the inflection of how the words were said.

When I did a TESOL course in the 1990s my tutors complained that this was all wrong and that all punctuation should go inside the inverted commas.

"I find that illogical," Virginia commented, "especially when the inverted commas are at the end of a sentence."