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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

#101

Post by thaumasiotes »

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.

Terminating the quoted sentence with a period is redundant, since the closing quotation mark also terminates it.

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

#102

Post by shannifin »

Agree with the post; interestingly, in grade school (here in America) I was actually taught both ways depending on the teacher's preference / belief (assuming we were not writing MLA research papers)... this mostly led to perpetual confusion, so we'd often just put the period directly under the quotation. (Of course, couldn't do that for typed assignments.) I remember one of my English teachers accepting both ways because she could never keep it straight herself.

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

#103

Post by sfg »

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,…

I like the 'more logical still' style.

The structure of the whole looks incomplete and unbalanced without the second full-stop, which I find ugly. I guess that I care more about logical structure (or my idea of logical structure), than typographical utility.

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

#104

Post by codingdave »

> There is no reason that there should be two different approaches to punctuation in the English language.

Why not? We have different vocabulary, different spelling. Our accents are sufficiently different that non-native speakers can't always understand both.

So serious question - why wouldn't punctuation also differ?

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

#105

Post by weinzierl »

Tepix wrote: post #43

This is indeed annoying and illogical when learning english, especially because other languages get it right. The french have a different speciality: punctuation marks that consist of two parts(i.e. ? ! ; :) are preceded by a space character. Also very irritating.

On the other hand, it was the English who used to have some extra space between sentences compared to the space between words. This is still the default in LaTeX, but I believe everyone turns it off by using the \frenchspacing command in the preamble.

Also German has its own verbs for "for the insertion of inappropriate spaces before a punctuation mark." and "for the insertion of inappropriate spaces after a punctuation mark."[1] which are often used in a derogatory manner in connection with people who do it wrongly.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenken

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

#106

Post by OscarCunningham »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #101
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.

Terminating the quoted sentence with a period is redundant, since the closing quotation mark also terminates it.

So would you suggest that it would make sense to never have punctuation before a quotation mark?

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

#107

Post by mdp2021 »

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.

And this is why more simply, the quotation mark can imply the period;

similarly, the comma can be inherited by the formulation and implied (there is no sacrifice in '«That's too bad», John said, «but you can recover»' for '«That's too bad, but you can recover»' - the break is in the formulation and the explicit comma is redundant).

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

#108

Post by somishere »

Logical aspirations aside, punctuation is largely meant to aid in reading.

While some marks provide emphasis, most (other than suggesting connectivity) denote a length of pause.

Punctuation (or lack thereof) that pulls you out of the flow of the reading is, IMHO, really not in the spirit of things ;)

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

#109

Post by psychoslave »

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.

Just don't put a ended sentence at the end of something that is not yet a finished utterance.

It's always possible to make a full sentence quotation after a colon, possibly using indentation:

  With just enough of learning to misquote.
    — Lord Byron
This can be even more explicit:

  “One whom it is easier to hate, but still easier to quote.”
    — Alexander Pope
Or you can also opt for inner quotation lightly altering the typography, like “quotation is the highest compliment you can pay to an author”, which is actually an excerpt from the wider quotation:

  “Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay to an author. Perhaps the next highest is, when a writer of any kind is so considerable that you go to the labor and pains of endeavoring to refute him before the public, the very doing of which is an incidental admission of his talent and power.”
    — Anonymous

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

#110

Post by fauigerzigerk »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #101
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.

Terminating the quoted sentence with a period is redundant, since the closing quotation mark also terminates it.

I agree with that, assuming there would be some indication if the quoted sentence wasn't complete.

I'm just saying that the outer/quoting sentence needs its own punctuation regardless of what's going on in between those quotation marks.

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