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The Punctuation Guide

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Re: The Punctuation Guide

#31

Post by SeanLuke »

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/quotation-marks.html#adja...

> Commas and periods that are part of the overall sentence go inside the quotation marks, even though they aren’t part of the original quotation.

I firmly refuse to go along with this nonsense.

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html

> The em dash is typically used without spaces on either side, and that is the style used in this guide. Most newspapers, however, set the em dash off with a single space on each side.

Isn't this is US versus Britain, not "newspapers" versus "typical use"? And AFAIK it's not a "single space": it's ideally a half-space (in US style). The problem with no space is that your eyes can't easily disambiguate it from a hyphenated single word.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#32

Post by open-source-ux »

booleandilemma wrote: post #20
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...

Not mentioned in the guide: in the UK very few people use the term 'parentheses', instead they just say brackets. Similarly, 'curly braces' is simply 'curly brackets'. And following on from that, you have 'square brackets' (same as US).

UK:

- Brackets ()

- Curly brackets {}

- Square brackets []

US:

- Parentheses ()

- Curly braces {}

- Square brackets []

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#33

Post by mlevental »

SeanLuke wrote: post #31

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/quotation-marks.html#adja... > Commas and periods that are part of the overall sentence go inside the quotation marks, even though they aren’t part of the original quotation. I firmly refuse to go along with this nonsense. http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html > The em dash is typically used without spaces on either side, and that is the style used in this guide. Most news…

>I firmly refuse to go along with this nonsense.

here here.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#34

Post by namelost »

SeanLuke wrote: post #31

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/quotation-marks.html#adja... > Commas and periods that are part of the overall sentence go inside the quotation marks, even though they aren’t part of the original quotation. I firmly refuse to go along with this nonsense. http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html > The em dash is typically used without spaces on either side, and that is the style used in this guide. Most news…

British is an en dash separated by spaces, American is an em dash with no spaces.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#35

Post by mannykannot »

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…

>Says who?

That would be you, apparently, calling people idiots for breaking what you call the only real rule you can think of.

Note that this is called a guide. Some of the rules are just convention, but many make the writing easier to follow, and some can help avoid ambiguity.

Even in the cases where it is merely a matter of convention, significant variance might be creative, but it is more likely to be taken as a signal that you haven't read much (allowance should be made for those for whom the language in question is not their native tongue.)

I dipped into this guide, and it seemed to be written in a very straightforward manner - take a look at the section on the differences between British and American punctuation, for example.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#36

Post by jameshart »

namelost wrote: post #34
SeanLuke wrote: post #31

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/quotation-marks.html#adja... > Commas and periods that are part of the overall sentence go inside the quotation marks, even though they aren’t part of the original quotation. I firmly refuse to go along with this nonsense. http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html > The em dash is typically used without spaces on either side, and that is the style used in this guide. Most news…

British is an en dash separated by spaces, American is an em dash with no spaces.

And make sure to use a non-breaking space before your en-dash, so it doesn't get orphaned at the beginning of a line.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#37

Post by 3pt14159 »

mysterypie wrote: post #23

Talking about punctuation abuse, people that litter their emails or texts with ellipses is something I can't figure out: "Hey! I haven't heard from you in a while... I'm still in Boston... Can't complain cause it's been good... I saw the circus before it closed..." What do they think they're saying with all those crazy unneeded ellipses?

Two otherwise very smart family members of mine both used to do this. It takes sitting down and explaining that email isn't a voicemail. We're not "hearing" the pause when we read, we're just confused and it makes the person writing seem dumber than they actually are.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#38

Post by insertnickname »

mlevental wrote: post #33
SeanLuke wrote: post #31

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/quotation-marks.html#adja... > Commas and periods that are part of the overall sentence go inside the quotation marks, even though they aren’t part of the original quotation. I firmly refuse to go along with this nonsense. http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html > The em dash is typically used without spaces on either side, and that is the style used in this guide. Most news…

>I firmly refuse to go along with this nonsense. here here.

Hear, hear

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#40

Post by hanbura »

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…

Arguments for British style quotes:

- doesn't mutate the quoted string

- fewer weird edge cases

- encodes more information in same amount of characters (if quote might have ended on punctuation)

- needs fewer rules

Arguments for American style quotes

- It looks more balanced if punctuation marks that use less ink than a quotation mark come before it

I think there is no surprise that hackers prefer the straight-forward way that might look marginally worse

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