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The Punctuation Guide

thepunctuationguide.com

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Re: The Punctuation Guide

#51

Post by kbp »

hyolaris wrote: post #50
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.

Em dashes should always be treated as a wordbreak, though; is that much software really broken regarding them? Just as a quick test with what I have installed on this computer, grep, Emacs (in fundamental-mode and text-mode) and LibreOffice Writer all recognise it as a word boundary.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#52

Post by ghaff »

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…

I assume that American-style quotes came about for typographic/aesthetic reasons. I agree that the British approach seems more logical and straightforward overall.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#53

Post by schwachs »

Stratoscope wrote: post #16

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…

I love the Oxford comma and have many spirited fights in my office about it.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#55

Post by AlbertoGP »

open-source-ux wrote: post #32
booleandilemma wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 []

Thanks for this! I'm Spanish, live in Germany, and speak English regularly with other non-native speakers: this causes a lot of confusion.

What I've ended up doing:

- Parentheses ()

- Braces {}

- Brackets []

It's good to know that, however economic this might look to me, it's still likely to be misunderstood or at least ambiguous even to native speakers.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#57

Post by jwilk »

> Requests that are phrased as questions should end with a period.

> Would you please send this report to the person indicated on the cover.

Wait, really? IANA native speaker, but I don't think I've ever seen such requests without question mark.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#58

Post by SerLava »

jwilk wrote: post #57

> Requests that are phrased as questions should end with a period. > Would you please send this report to the person indicated on the cover. Wait, really? IANA native speaker, but I don't think I've ever seen such requests without question mark.

Call me illiterate but that would be seen as either a mistake or as intentional rudeness.

We structure instructions as requests for the sake of politeness, and using a period here would come across as a very subtle mockery of this. In context it would imply some level of disdain for the recipient's right to turn down the request.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#59

Post by SerLava »

ghaff wrote: post #52
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…

I assume that American-style quotes came about for typographic/aesthetic reasons. I agree that the British approach seems more logical and straightforward overall.

Supposedly it has something to do with typewriters malfunctioning when placing the period or comma outside. Which makes it even more annoying that it is an adopted standard.

Re: The Punctuation Guide

#60

Post by ghaff »

SerLava wrote: post #59
ghaff wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume that American-style quotes came about for typographic/aesthetic reasons. I agree that the British approach seems more logical and straightforward overall.

Supposedly it has something to do with typewriters malfunctioning when placing the period or comma outside. Which makes it even more annoying that it is an adopted standard.

I'm not sure I believe about typewriters. It doesn't really make sense to me as the characters are still adjacent to the quotes. So I wouldn't think shifting them would help with jamming the keys.

I do suspect though that it's probably related to aesthetics and/or mechanical issues associated with lead type.

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