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The Punctuation Guide

thepunctuationguide.com

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Re: The Punctuation Guide

#11

Post by pluma »

mh-cx wrote: post #6
ggus wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree: there are no rules in a language. The baseline is to try to produce something that can be understood by your public, so try to stick to whatever convention they are used to, or come up with new ways that they can make a sense of. But I won't even call that a "rule".

> I agree: there are no rules in a language. Really? Isn't that a bit broad? It may be half true for some languages but definitely not for all. For example in Germany we have the "Der Duden" which is not only a dictionary that defines the correct spelling of words but also contains a huge set of grammatical rules. It's still the de-facto standard for correct language in German. And even in english you'd probably agre…

The Duden doesn't define correct spelling, it merely documents it. It's decidedly not a prescriptive work. What you're likely thinking of is the German orthography rules defined by the Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung and in turn strongly influenced by actual practice rather than just dogma -- the most recent revisions are very forgiving with regard to acceptable variations.

Linguists on the other hand have given up on prescriptivism decades ago. Scientific linguistics are entirely descriptivist, studying how language is used rather than prescribing how it ought to be used.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#12

Post by teddyh »

ranko wrote: post #5

This is quite specific to US English, for example "Top Ten Tips" number 2 about quotation marks. As Robert Bringhurst says in The Elements of Typographic Style : Most North American editors like their commas and periods inside the raised commas, "like this;" but their colons and semicolons outside. Many British editors prefer to put all punctuation outside, with the milk and the cat.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html

> Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses, much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if “Jim is going” is a phrase, and so are “Bill runs” and “Spock groks”, then hackers generally prefer to write: “Jim is going”, “Bill runs”, and “Spock groks”. This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong in them. Given the sorts of examples that can come up in discussions of programming, American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading. When communicating command lines or small pieces of code, extra characters can be a real pain in the neck.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#13

Post by tpeo »

IshKebab wrote: post #2

Actually pretty good but it still falls into the trap of thinking that there are rules, and that some people follow them and some people break them. For example: > When used in this way, the bracketed information should be an addition, not a substitution. For example, if the original quotation is “She never called back,” do not change it to “[Lucy] never called back.” Instead write: “She [Lucy] never called back.” (N…

Imagine that we want to travel between two points in a rugged landscape. By the very nature of the problem, we have infinitely many ways to do this. However, once we start imposing certain constraints e.g. that we should always prefer the path that requires the lesser amount of energy, our set of possible solutions narrows down pretty fast.

I know particularly aggressive pedants made linguistic rules unfashionable, but most of the time they are merely suggestions of how to get the most of language e. g. how to avoid ambiguities and get your meaning across. Sure, they aren't rules in the sense of constraining every single possible manifestation of language. But no one ever thought that. Not even the pedants: instead they believed that they should constrain every possible manifestation, which implies that they believed they don't.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#14

Post by rocqua »

What about period placement and display-style math (as opposed to inline math). Take the following example.

From FOO we can conclude that:

    CAT = FOOBAR
Does one place a period inside that display math? It has nothing to do with the equation, but it seems like the only reasonable place for it.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#15

Post by hhjkjhkjhhlkj »

teddyh wrote: post #12
ranko wrote: post #5

This is quite specific to US English, for example "Top Ten Tips" number 2 about quotation marks. As Robert Bringhurst says in The Elements of Typographic Style : Most North American editors like their commas and periods inside the raised commas, "like this;" but their colons and semicolons outside. Many British editors prefer to put all punctuation outside, with the milk and the cat.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html > Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses, much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if “Jim is going” is a phrase, and so are “Bill runs” and “Spock groks”, then hackers generally prefer to write: “Jim is going”, “Bill runs”, and “Spock groks”. This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which would put the continuation com…

I find the changing stuff that is a quotation at odds with the whole point of quoting something.

I'm from the UK so the guide is actually unhelpful for me as it introduces what I'd see as bad practices.

Also an ellipses is a special character not 3 full stops, even if they are a good substitute.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#16

Post by Stratoscope »

Much of the advice here is good, but some is a bit weird.

> I will give the document to my brother, Tom. (The writer has only one brother. The brother's name is nonessential and therefore set off with a comma.)

> I will give the document to my brother Tom. (The writer has more than one brother. In this case, the specific brother—Tom—is essential information and should not be set off with a comma.)

I know this used to be considered an important distinction, but I think few writers would worry about it today. Does the reader care if Tom is the writer's only brother? Either way the writer is talking only about Tom, not any possible other brothers. I think many writers today would leave out the comma in either case.

Take an example where it's clear there is only one:

I am going to visit my mother Helen.

I am going to visit my mother, Helen.

I don't think leaving out the comma implies that I have more than one mother, and I doubt if anyone cares much about the comma here either.

The trend today is to simply leave out commas where the meaning is clear.

This example of the Oxford comma is really confusing:

> I am taking art history, Russian literature, microeconomics, and macroeconomics next semester.

It's a valid point that omitting the Oxford comma could make it sound like "microeconomics and macroeconomics" is a single course, but using the comma makes it sound like the first three courses are being taken this semester and macroeconomics next semester. It should be rewritten:

> Next semester I am taking art history, Russian literature, microeconomics, and macroeconomics.

There is a similar situation where the Oxford comma is needed in the programming joke:

There are two hard problems in computer science: naming things, cache invalidation, and off-by-one errors.

It ruins the joke (to my eyes) if you leave it out:

There are two hard problems in computer science: naming things, cache invalidation and off-by-one errors.

And enough with the commas already in a sentence like this:

> Your work has been, frankly, awful.

Ugh. Does anyone actually write that instead of:

Your work has been frankly awful.

(Of course I would never say that to someone but would find a more constructive way to put it.)

My advice: Write simply and clearly. Know these purported rules but take them with a healthy grain of salt. Omit unnecessary punctuation where the meaning is clear to the reader. And if you need extra punctuation to avoid confusion, consider rewriting the sentence for clarity.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#17

Post by rocqua »

teddyh wrote: post #12
ranko wrote: post #5

This is quite specific to US English, for example "Top Ten Tips" number 2 about quotation marks. As Robert Bringhurst says in The Elements of Typographic Style : Most North American editors like their commas and periods inside the raised commas, "like this;" but their colons and semicolons outside. Many British editors prefer to put all punctuation outside, with the milk and the cat.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html > Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses, much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if “Jim is going” is a phrase, and so are “Bill runs” and “Spock groks”, then hackers generally prefer to write: “Jim is going”, “Bill runs”, and “Spock groks”. This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which would put the continuation com…

I guess that makes me a 'hacker'.

I can see why we the old way might look nicer, but the hacker way is simply more precise.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#18

Post by bmn__ »

pluma wrote: post #11
mh-cx wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree: there are no rules in a language. Really? Isn't that a bit broad? It may be half true for some languages but definitely not for all. For example in Germany we have the "Der Duden" which is not only a dictionary that defines the correct spelling of words but also contains a huge set of grammatical rules. It's still the de-facto standard for correct language in German. And even in english you'd probably agre…

The Duden doesn't define correct spelling, it merely documents it. It's decidedly not a prescriptive work. What you're likely thinking of is the German orthography rules defined by the Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung and in turn strongly influenced by actual practice rather than just dogma -- the most recent revisions are very forgiving with regard to acceptable variations. Linguists on the other hand have given up…

One particularly nasty hold-out of minority prescriptivists among those lexicographers was the renouncement of capital sharp s. It took about a good century to force them to not deny reality anymore.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#20

Post by booleandilemma »

ranko wrote: post #5

This is quite specific to US English, for example "Top Ten Tips" number 2 about quotation marks. As Robert Bringhurst says in The Elements of Typographic Style : Most North American editors like their commas and periods inside the raised commas, "like this;" but their colons and semicolons outside. Many British editors prefer to put all punctuation outside, with the milk and the cat.

The guide is for American punctuation.

The author has a page explaining the British versus American styles here: http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/british-versus-american-s...

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