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The Punctuation Guide

thepunctuationguide.com

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Re: The Punctuation Guide

#41

Post by Harvey-Specter »

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…

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/british-versus-american-s...

> American style places commas and periods inside the quotation marks, even if they are not in the original material. British style (more sensibly) places unquoted periods and commas outside the quotation marks.

Turns out that you (and I) prefer the British style.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#42

Post by jameshart »

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…

Why do you think the a/an rule is legitimate, but that, say, verb-subject agreement isn't? Both are pretty much universally followed, but can be broken for particular effect. If you allow a/an to be called a rule, I think you have to also say 'I am/you are' is a rule, too.

A/an creates though my favorite technical copyediting conundrum, which is that of which version of the article to use for the subject "SQL query". Some readers will vocalize this as 'sequel query', others as 'ess-queue-ell query'. If you write 'an SQL query' you will seem illiterate to half your readers, while 'a SQL query' is just as jarring for the other half.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#43

Post by IshKebab »

yorwba wrote: post #25
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…

I can't tell whom you're calling an idiot here: people who pronounce historic with an initial vowel or those who don't?

People who say "an historic", with a hard 'h'. It is because people used to say "an 'istoric", which is correct.

The reason "an" exists is because it is quite hard to say things like "a elephant". Much easier to say "an elephant". Similarly it's quite hard to say "a 'istoric occasion" - much easier to say "an 'istoric occasion".

However since we now say "historic", not "'istoric", it is much easier to say "a historic occasion" than "an historic occasion". For some reason this (and only this) combination has been repeated enough that people over-correct and think that there must be some rule that they never learnt that dictates that it is "an historic". They don't really consider why "an" exists.

Nobody ever says "Tomorrow I have an history lesson."

Anyway, that's about the only 'rule' I can think of that doesn't really have any exceptions.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#44

Post by Harvey-Specter »

hanbura wrote: post #40
teddyh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-forwar…

In the British style what is the rule if the quotation ends in punctuation? Do they include additional punctuation outside the quotation, since presumably the punctuation inside the quotation doesn't count as ending the sentence?

I'm thinking of a sentence like:

> Bill said "I prefer American style."

Would the British write it as follows?

> Bill said "I prefer American style.".

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#45

Post by cup-of-tea »

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?

I believe it is due to an unwillingness to make a concrete statement. A full stop is strong and is equivalent to speech in a flat and confident tone. The ellipsis seems to stand in for short disclaimer phrases like "by the way", "in my opinion", "in case you were wondering", etc.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#46

Post by dghf »

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...

A couple of things that page doesn't get quite right:

> Mr., Mrs., and Ms. all take periods in American English. In British English, the periods are omitted.

Common British practice omits full stops after any abbreviation (not just these three titles) where the last letter is the same as the last letter of the unabbreviated word: so Dr, Lt, hr aren't followed by full stops but Prof., Capt., sec. are. In fact it's becoming more and more common to omit full stops after abbreviations entirely: this is the Guardian's house style, for example.

> British usage dictates a period between the hours and minutes when writing the time (e.g., 10.30). American usage dictates a colon (e.g., 10:30).

Usage varies, but a colon is far more common with the 24-hour clock (e.g. 15:00 rather than 15.00).

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#47

Post by dghf »

Harvey-Specter wrote: post #44
hanbura wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-forwar…

In the British style what is the rule if the quotation ends in punctuation? Do they include additional punctuation outside the quotation, since presumably the punctuation inside the quotation doesn't count as ending the sentence? I'm thinking of a sentence like: > Bill said "I prefer American style." Would the British write it as follows? > Bill said "I prefer American style.".

No, we'd write it the first way, even if the quotation ended with punctuation not appropriate to the sentence as a whole: e.g.

> Bill asked "Do you prefer American style?"

even though the sentence, taken as a whole, is a statement rather than a question.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#48

Post by benji-york »

rocqua wrote: post #14

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.

In that case, I elide the terminal.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#49

Post by thomasfoster96 »

> 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.

Please never do this.

Commas and full stops have meaning. You’re modifying the original quote without telling the reader that you have done so. How this became the accepted practice in so many style guides and grammar checkers I will never understand. I shall defer to Geoffrey Pullum’s Punctuation and human freedom [0], whose title is entirely appropriate, for justification. Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style [1] can provide the unconvinced further justification.

[0] http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/punctfree.pdf [1] https://www.amazon.com/Sense-Style-Thinking-Persons-Writing/...

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#50

Post by hyolaris »

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…

Another problem with no spaces is that it is difficult to use editors, word processing software, etc. because the dash and surrounding words are treated as one thing.

This came up in an editing and typesetting discussion one day. I've been convinced ever since that there should be at least a small space around em dashes.

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