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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

#31

Post by reedf1 »

bambax wrote: post #21
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.

Would you sacrifice clarity for elegance?

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

#32

Post by Stratoscope »

bambax wrote: post #21
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.

Besides, if you look at it upside down, you might be tempted to invoke Godwin's Law.

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

#33

Post by coldtea »

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.

>I do not understand why OP decided to use "English" which implies that people in Scotland and Northern Ireland might punctuate differently.

Not sure about the author, but for several countries "English" is colloqualy used as a stand-in for British in general (and England for the UK), as those were the British they most commonly met.

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

#35

Post by rom1v »

The first time I read a book in English, I thought the quotation mark after the dot was a typo/syntax error (it didn't parse correctly, and it made no sense to me).

After so many instances of the exact same typo in the book, I thought the author/editor had a specific problem with ordering quotation marks and dots.

It's only when I read another English book with the same "syntax error" that I realized that it was not a bug in English.

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

#36

Post by laborat »

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…

But what would you do if Dr Johnson was surprised, and you yourself were shouting, i.e.:

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

AFAICS, the only way to render this faithfully is the way I just did. In other words, you really do need the punctuation both of the outer sentence and the inner sentence. By extension, the only logical approach for the original sentence would be:

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

On a different note, might I use this moment to complain about American books not closing quotations, if they continue on onto a new paragraph, and then opening them again? I.e.:

John said: "I have two things to say.

"One of these things is this.

"The other thing is this."

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

#37

Post by coldtea »

trzeci wrote: post #13

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

OCD would use the former as those are more proper typographical quotes. Straight edge quotes is a computer text thing, not a typographical convention for regular prose.

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

#38

Post by thewakalix »

Y_Y wrote: post #19
jjgreen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.". 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.

Unfortunately, the quotation mark is not a valid operator character.

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

#39

Post by OJFord »

coldtea wrote: post #30
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?

See po's comment providing SE links for doing it in tex: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28536834

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

#40

Post by bencollier49 »

For some reason, in school in Britain in the 1980s, we were taught rather religiously to always end anything inside speech marks with a comma. I'm not sure where this style comes from, but it confused me terribly and took me years to correct.
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