Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American

erichgrunewald.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 393 posts

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

#191

Post by abduhl »

JasonFruit wrote: post #186
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,…

Did you really say, "I tend to agree with the author?" See the problem there? The quoted sentence is not a question, but the outer sentence is; why, then, is the question mark inside the quotation marks? Double punctuation would solve that ambiguity, and would not be redundant. Alternatively, and I'm not sure which is correct, if the question mark is outside the quotation marks, was the quote a complete sentence?

The question mark is supposed to go outside the quote if it is not part of the quote, FYI. Same with exclamation points. Internalizing only happens with periods and commas.

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

#192

Post by chromatin »

virgilp wrote: post #34

Is this just a version of "Prefer tabs over spaces when writing code"? Because if so, I already know the outcome of this debate.

No, I think not, because the quotation marks imbue semantic meaning to what’s inside.

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

#194

Post by JohnWhigham »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #90
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 Emer…

4-letter-long and above prepositions are capitalized. Can't remember where I got that rule, but they're probably using that; I use it for my music collection.

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

#197

Post by Accacin »

open-source-ux wrote: post #111
ponco wrote: post #54

I genuinely love how American, Australian, and British, English all differ in these subtle ways. I think another example that gets me is: `e.g.` vs `e.g.,` MS Word favours the `e.g.,` which I never see in Australian English.

There are so many small differences between English language flavours, it's fascinating. Going off on a tangent, here's a random example... The way brackets/parentheses are referred to in American English vs British English is different. In the US : () = parentheses [] = brackets {} = braces (or curly braces) = angle brackets In the UK : () = brackets (or 'round brackets') [] = square brackets {} = curly brackets = a…

Huh, I'm from the UK and use the American versions. They American ones feel more logical to me. Probably all the programming books I read used the word 'parentheses' (:

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

#198

Post by jameshart »

I think, given that this is just some guy’s opinion (it’s not like this is someone who has a job as a professional copyeditor or publisher of a respected style guide), the only real takeaway most people should take from this is:

There are various conventions you can adopt around quoted punctuation

You, as an individual writer of English prose, have the option of adopting a style you prefer

It’s okay for reasonable people to disagree about that

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

#200

Post by tsujp »

open-source-ux wrote: post #111
ponco wrote: post #54

I genuinely love how American, Australian, and British, English all differ in these subtle ways. I think another example that gets me is: `e.g.` vs `e.g.,` MS Word favours the `e.g.,` which I never see in Australian English.

There are so many small differences between English language flavours, it's fascinating. Going off on a tangent, here's a random example... The way brackets/parentheses are referred to in American English vs British English is different. In the US : () = parentheses [] = brackets {} = braces (or curly braces) = angle brackets In the UK : () = brackets (or 'round brackets') [] = square brackets {} = curly brackets = a…

{} are also referred to as handlebars, I've had a few American colleagues use that.
Post reply on HN