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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

#81

Post by rivo »

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,…

What would be the proper punctuation if you rearranged the sentence slightly?

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

Is the period redundant? Or the comma after it? None of them? This looks almost as ugly as two periods.

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

#82

Post by hellbannedguy »

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 always made more sence.

I used to love to write. That all ended in college, with English Instructors. I wasen't the only student either.

There was so much emphasis on grammar, interesting writers just seemed to sound all alike. I enjoyed some of the papers that were read aloud the first few weeks. By the end of the courses, the papers were technically correct, but boring, and lacked imagination. I could see the enthusiasm drain from the students faces with every paper covered in red Sharpie corrections.

I had one teacher that used to down grade me for not writing out numbers 1-10, and only using numbers for 11 on. I still don't know what's right, or care anymore.

(I believe S & W recommends writing out 1-10.)

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

#83

Post by shannifin »

donatj wrote: post #20

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…

Unlike periods and commas, putting question marks and exclamation marks inside the quotation when they are not part of the quote is against AP, APA, Chicago, and MLA style specifications... Granted, I don't know if technical writing typically adheres to some other style, but shoving a question mark inside a quote it isn't part of is definitely not typical of American styles in general.

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

#84

Post by arethuza »

KronisLV wrote: post #23
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…

> 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…

I guess that's what XML namespaces were supposed to allow.

Reality seemed to involve eldritch abominations like one system I encountered that had entire Base64 encoded XML documents embedded as attribute values in a higher level document and then this approach applied recursively....

Edit: Of course, this wasn't XMLs fault - but for some reason a lot of XML used in the "enterprise" world seemed to be primarily designed to eat the soul of whoever gazed upon it.

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

#85

Post by felipellrocha »

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.

Finally someone who agrees with me. Don’t want the double punctuation? Write a simpler sentence.

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

#86

Post by john-aj »

rozab wrote: post #61

I was typing out an explanation/justification to the effect that when speaking aloud, the punctuation at the end of the sentence is 'heard' in the last word, even if the word is quoted. We insert a pause before the start of the quote to indicate it was direct, but there isn't a way of indicating whether, say, a question mark belongs inside or outside the quotation. But then I sounded out some examples in my head and…

Also, aren't questions marked primarily by word order rather than intonation in English?

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

#87

Post by mdp2021 »

rivo wrote: post #81
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,…

What would be the proper punctuation if you rearranged the sentence slightly? Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, “I refute it thus.”, as his foot rebounded. Is the period redundant? Or the comma after it? None of them? This looks almost as ugly as two periods.

The period before the quotation mark is redundant, because the quotation mark implies it (in this case).

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

#88

Post by dspillett »

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.

Same. It is like matching brackets. Two sentence ends, one quoted and one quoting, so two full-stops. And like putting exclamation/question/interrobang/other marks in the right place depending on who is using them (quoter, quotee, or both).

Of course you can shorten your quote by one character and leave out the inner stop, and I'd say that was equally valid. I would tend to do that unless I want to make it absolutely clear that what I was quoting wasn't a run-on sentence that continued after that point.

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

#89

Post by bloak »

Udo_Schmitz wrote: post #57
trzeci wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. I used to programming quotes so much that every variation from it makes a pain. Especially mentioned below the automatic quote replacement by some text editor. Which does not make sense for me, when I paste a code snippet. Another pain is when I see such code snippets on the web. For the clarity, it's not only the US quotes I have a problem with. Other languages have also their corks: - PL: „quote” - PL…

DE would be: „Zitat“. »Zitat« is also allowed. «Zitat» is mostly used in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Note missing spaces compared to French. (Edited after correction from user bloak below)

> »« is allowed but mostly used in Switzerland

I think it's «...» in Switzerland, while »...« is widely used in several countries, including Germany, and is the "main" system arguably only in Denmark.

See https://jakubmarian.com/map-of-quotation-marks-in-european-l...

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

#90

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

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 ;-)

It's less logical even than that. It's almost every word. On the NYT homepage right now, for example, one story is "Justice Dept. Asks Judge to Block Texas From Enforcing Abortion Law". So "From" is capitalised but "to" isn't.

Weirdly, scrolling down the page, the technology section appears to go its own way on capitalisation rules: "Apple's new iPhone 13 is better, but not by much." is followed by "Apple Issues Emergency Updates to Close a Spyware Flaw".

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