Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American
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Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American
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Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American
#2As a programmer, I’d prefer a combination of the two:
Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus.”.
as I think it’s weird that a punctuation mark inside a quote can end the sentence that contains the quote.
I’d argue like this: in the above case there are two sentences, the quote and the sentence that contains the quote. Both need to be terminated with a period.
Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American
#3I think the argument for the American style is aesthetics. I don't like it, but I can understand that there are people who prefer what looks better. TFA did not address this at all, which is a pity.
Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American
#4As a programmer, I’d prefer a combination of the two: Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus.”. as I think it’s weird that a punctuation mark inside a quote can end the sentence that contains the quote. I’d argue like this: in the above case there are two sentences, the quote and the sentence that contains the quote. Both need to be terminated with a period.
.". does look rather like a hairy Kilroy
Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American
#5As a programmer, I’d prefer a combination of the two: Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus.”. as I think it’s weird that a punctuation mark inside a quote can end the sentence that contains the quote. I’d argue like this: in the above case there are two sentences, the quote and the sentence that contains the quote. Both need to be terminated with a period.
I feel the period inside quotes is redundant. The last quotation mark can signal both: end of quote and end of sentence within the quote. Though it gets complicated when there are multiple sentences within the quote.
> Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus. I refute it thus”.
This looks "unbalanced" to me.
Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American
#6The linked article correctly uses "British" to denote the style of punctuation, I do not understand why OP decided to use "English" which implies that people in Scotland and Northern Ireland might punctuate differently.
Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American
#7As a programmer, I’d prefer a combination of the two: Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus.”. as I think it’s weird that a punctuation mark inside a quote can end the sentence that contains the quote. I’d argue like this: in the above case there are two sentences, the quote and the sentence that contains the quote. Both need to be terminated with a period.
yep, I do mention this approach in a footnote, though it looks kinda awkward to me. maybe just because I’m not used to it. it’s definitely not necessary for reading aloud, where it’s enough to know that there’s a punctuation there. but when reading silently it does make more sense.
Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American
#8As a programmer, I’d prefer a combination of the two: Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus.”. as I think it’s weird that a punctuation mark inside a quote can end the sentence that contains the quote. I’d argue like this: in the above case there are two sentences, the quote and the sentence that contains the quote. Both need to be terminated with a period.
I strongly agree.
While we're on the topic, all the journals I'm familiar with require punctuation like full stops (aka periods) to be included in displaystyle maths expressions. There is a some logical justification for this, but it looks awful, and can be downright confusing depending on the sort of notation employed. It particularly irks me to see a spare comma tagged on to the end of a tensor calculus expression, that's supposed to be understood in the context of the surrounding prose, rather than the adjecant mathematical expression.
Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American
#9As a programmer, I’d prefer a combination of the two: Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus.”. as I think it’s weird that a punctuation mark inside a quote can end the sentence that contains the quote. I’d argue like this: in the above case there are two sentences, the quote and the sentence that contains the quote. Both need to be terminated with a period.
Footnote from the article:
> More logical still would be to have two periods, one marking the end of the quoted sentence and the other the end of the top-level sentence. But that would be redundant and also look ugly.
I agree with you in principle, but aesthetics matter!
Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American
#10The linked article correctly uses "British" to denote the style of punctuation, I do not understand why OP decided to use "English" which implies that people in Scotland and Northern Ireland might punctuate differently.
uhm, good point, fixed. that was just a mistake.
edit: for the record, I wrote the article and also posted it here. so I figured I could take the liberty of changing the title when sharing here.