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Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American

erichgrunewald.com

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Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American

#11

Post by rekoil »

runeks wrote: post #2

As 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.

This is how I always do it.

I don't care what other people think, this is the only thing that makes sense if you ask me.

Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American

#12

Post by programmer_dude »

hibbelig wrote: post #3

I 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.

FWIW the British style looks more aesthetically pleasing to me. The American style reminds me of inappropriately mixed brackets: [(]). Cringe.

Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American

#14

Post by dgb23 »

gerikson wrote: post #6

The 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.

Also the article's title is more juicy. HN sometimes goes overboard with editing titles. I guess it is a matter of taste.

Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American

#15

Post by bloak »

runeks wrote: post #2

As 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.

> Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus.”.

Well, I don't really like that: it just doesn't look nice to me. I would suggest one of the following:

Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus”.

You've chosen not to quote the full stop. There's no law that says you have to include everything in the quotation, right?

Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded: “I refute it thus.”

This also works if the quoted sentence ends with a question or exclamation mark.

It's a shame that punctuation of human languages can't be logical, but it seems that we're stuck with inconsistent requirements and messy compromises. Cases like the following really confuse and annoy me:

“On the other hand[,]”[,] she said, “we could wait till dark[.]”[.]

(Should that depend on whether the original spoken sentence would, if written, contain a comma after "hand"?)

Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American

#16

Post by odiroot »

runeks wrote: post #2

As 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 wrote my whole master thesis as you describe. It was logical to me. Then my promotor complained that it's not correct so I had to go through whole 100+ pages to correct all the instances.

Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American

#17

Post by donatj »

runeks wrote: post #2

As 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 would vote omit the punctuation from the original quote unless it adds something of particular value, which that period doesn’t seem to?

Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American

#18

Post by po »

The real answer is to use the British style but then combine the " and . into a ligature in the font so that it looks nicer like the American style. Simple!

edit: Just searched and there are some people doing exactly this with negative kerning:

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/369077/overlapping-q...

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/202799/how-can-i-typ...

Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American

#19

Post by Y_Y »

jjgreen wrote: post #4
runeks wrote: post #2

As 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here

I bet we'll see a "hairy Kilroy" operator in the next Haskell library for meromorphic lens co-combinators.

Re: Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American

#20

Post by donatj »

I got in a heated debate about this with a technical writing instructor. Namely, I was ending a question with a quote along the lines of

> Why did Jake believe the AI was “going to kill us all”?

The instructor wanted me to put the question mark of the outer sentence within the quotation marks despite the quoted text not containing a question mark.

> Why did Jake believe the AI was “going to kill us all?”

I felt like doing so changed the meaning of the quote, and it felt like a misrepresentation. This being the “correct” way to do it has always irritated me.

I ended up rewording the sentence so it wouldn’t end with the quotation, and have just actively avoided ending sentences in quotes ever since.

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