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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

#21

Post by bambax »

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.

Strongly disagree. This is an abomination. Language and typography have to be elegant in addition to intelligible.

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

#22

Post by TedShiller »

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.

lol

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

#23

Post by KronisLV »

bloak wrote: post #15
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 lar…

> There's no law that says you have to include everything in the quotation, right?

Oh, if only languages worked so consistently.

  DESCRIPTION_OF_WHAT_WAS_SAID: "$(DIRECT_QUOTE.)".
Then again, in programming things don't always nest either, since sub shell calls have all sorts of oddities in regards to escape sequences.

Has there ever been a case of anything nesting nicely, be it in languages, programming, or any other medium of writing? Maybe XML? I'm not sure.

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

#24

Post by blitzar »

programmer_dude wrote: post #12
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.

> for the American style is aesthetics

Why would you make a style choice to make something less aesthetically pleasing?

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

#25

Post by Veen »

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.

A footnote in the article addresses this: "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 tend to agree with the author. While it's logically consistent, it's typographically redundant. There's no need to end a sentence with a full stop, a quotation mark, another full stop, and then a space, before beginning the next sentence with a capital letter.

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

#28

Post by Y_Y »

trzeci wrote: post #13

Which makes no sense IMHO is to use “” instead of "". But it could be my OCD also.

It's all fun and games until you try to copy the "66 and 99"-style quotes from one place to another, or your ”helpful“ text editor automagically makes a mess of them. It's a pity no good ``asymmetric'' style ever really took off in English. I'm particularly fond of the French «chevrons», and relatedly, ¡Spanish exclamations!

⸘Why has not yet the opening interrobang received similarly wide adoption‽

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

#29

Post by maddyboo »

bloak wrote: post #15
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 lar…

> It’s a shame that the punctuation of human languages can’t be logical.

    s/the punctuation of //

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

#30

Post by coldtea »

bambax wrote: post #26

The reason this problem exists is because computers and font libraries don't have all the characters we need. The point or comma should be at the same place as the quotes, under them, not before or after.

>at the same place as the quotes, under them

What?

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