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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

#71

Post by dTal »

laborat wrote: post #36
bloak wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The quotation thing is irritating if you treat them like matched parentheses, but if you allow the opening and closing quotes to have different meanings, there is a logical interpretation. The opening quote is required syntax for the beginning of any quoted paragraph, so that the reader is reminded that we're still in an extended quote. The closing quote means "this person is finished speaking, and the next quote may be assumed to be a different person." The advantage is the streamlining of longer exchanges:

John spoke to Paul. John said: "I have two things to say.

"One of the things is this."

"What's the other?"

"The other thing is this."

Even in the purest programming languages, we're happy to design special-case idioms that sacrifice perfect orthogonality for better human factors, provided there's an unambiguous parse. Scheme provides (define ) - utterly elementary. Yet defining functions by binding identifiers to anonymous lambdas is so annoying that an unneccesary and inconsistent second syntax is provided, (define () ).

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

#72

Post by ttctciyf »

reedf1 wrote: post #31
bambax wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Would you sacrifice clarity for elegance?

What clarity is sacrificed? Is it in doubt that the sentence ended?

The single period favours both elegance and clarity over slavish and unimaginative punctiliousness.

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

#73

Post by bujak300 »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #67
Veen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I don't see why it is redundant. There is no reason to assume that the quoted sentence ends the quoting sentence. Imagine this being the last thing you see on a page. Without turning the page, there would be no way of knowing whether the quoting sentence is complete. But these things are just conventions. It's futile to demand any kind of logic or consistency.

If a quote is incomplete and a meaningful part is omitted there are other typographical conventions to indicate that, like a double period .. for example

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

#74

Post by joombaga »

iggldiggl wrote: post #44
Y_Y wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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‽

I don't really like the dedicated interrobang character, because it loses the distinction between ?! and !?, which is probably rather subtle, but to my mind definitively there.

How would you define "?!" vs "!?" ? I agree they're different. To me the "greater" feeling comes second. "?!" is more surprising, while "!?" is more confusing. With "‽" the feelings are equal.

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

#75

Post by dredmorbius »

macdice wrote: post #70

Another stupid detail like this that immediately tells you that text is from America is the capitalisation of every word in a title. Compare the front page of the NY Times with the front pages from any other English speaking country and you see the contrast. I didn't check, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Canadians go both ways at random ;-)

cOnsider tHe pOssible cOmpromises aVailable tO tHe eNterprising lAnguage sTylist!

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

#76

Post by bambax »

reedf1 wrote: post #31
bambax wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Would you sacrifice clarity for elegance?

Good question! Perhaps one of the most important questions regarding writing...

I would argue clarity and elegance don't oppose one another; elegance means being as clear as possible without being clumsy or heavy handed, and without insulting your reader's intelligence. Said reader is not a machine, they're supposed to be fluent in the language.

We should reduce ambiguity as much as possible, but no more than that. Adding signs where no ambiguity remains only worsens the signal to noise ratio.

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

#77

Post by gilgoomesh »

Veen wrote: post #25
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,…

Do you mean, like this: ““I refute it thus.”, he said.”? It does get ugly.

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

#78

Post by user-the-name »

The only reason the "American style" exists is a technical workaround: It was easier to damage the expensive lead type used in print shops a century ago if the thin period character was used on the end of the line, rather than the thicker, sturdier quotation mark, so they were swapped as a cost-saving measure.

None of this has been relevant for many decades, and people have forgotten the reason for this rule. It was never correct to do, it was a choice to do it the wrong way around out of convenience.

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

#79

Post by smitty1e »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #67
Veen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I don't see why it is redundant. There is no reason to assume that the quoted sentence ends the quoting sentence. Imagine this being the last thing you see on a page. Without turning the page, there would be no way of knowing whether the quoting sentence is complete. But these things are just conventions. It's futile to demand any kind of logic or consistency.

Punctuation has a braking effect on the reader.

, ; : .

If you're at a full stop, the second . feels superfluous.

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

#80

Post by fauigerzigerk »

bujak300 wrote: post #73
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why it is redundant. There is no reason to assume that the quoted sentence ends the quoting sentence. Imagine this being the last thing you see on a page. Without turning the page, there would be no way of knowing whether the quoting sentence is complete. But these things are just conventions. It's futile to demand any kind of logic or consistency.

If a quote is incomplete and a meaningful part is omitted there are other typographical conventions to indicate that, like a double period .. for example

>If a quote is incomplete and a meaningful part is omitted there are other typographical conventions to indicate that, like a double period .. for example

Yes, but what I'm talking about is the reverse situation. How would you know whether or not the quoting (outer) sentence is complete? You cannot logically infer that from the quoted (inner) sentence, which is why I'm saying that the second period is not redudant.

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