In Xinsheng, an employee with the handle Youxin lamented: “I want to advance and retreat alongside the company, but then my boss told me to pack up and go”, followed by two sad-face emoticons.
Why is the comma outside the closing inverted commas?
Thanks.
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Here, instead of a colon you need a comma, if you want to use the quotation marks. Or, if you use the colon, the inverted commas may be omitted.
Nevertheless, I wonder how the phrase followed by two sad-face emoticons comes when a speech/emotion expressed is reported.
Emoticons are used after what needs to be written is written in full as in … my boss told me to pack up and go. 
Have I understood your question correctly?
Thanks, Anglophile.
In Xinsheng, an employee with the handle Youxin lamented, “I want to advance and retreat alongside the company, but then my boss told me to pack up and go”, followed by two sad-face emoticons.
I mean: Why is the comma next to ‘go’ outside the closing inverted commas instead of inside?
[I too don’t understand how ‘followed by two sad-face emoticons’ is related to the rest of the text.]
Sorry. I think I was answering this question with your earlier question in mind.
Yes, you are right. In my opinion, the comma should appear just before the quotation mark.
Well, whatever is written, whether fully or partially, is usually punctuated with a period or a comma or a semi colon or a question mark or an exclamation mark.
The sentence under discussion is not complete with … pack and go. So a comma is used there. And this comma, in my view, should come just before the quotation mark (or the closing punctuation).
However, let me say honestly that the sentence, as already pointed out by me, lacks semantic and syntactical aspects. The phrase (followed by two sad-face emoticons) does confuse me although it conforms to the original as can be seen from the source.