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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

#201

Post by Veen »

munchbunny wrote: post #171
tener wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parsing nested parens requires stack, which humans are vary bad at handling. So writing in this style will be harder to read compared to linear style that people are used to. There are topics inherently nonlinear, but they are often linearized or directly drawn in 2d space.

Also most languages already support nested clause structures without the use of parentheses.

They do, but there's a limit to how much recursive embedding the average reader can cope with, especially if the writer embeds a lot of modifying clauses in the middle of the main clause so the reader is left waiting for information they need to make sense of the sentence as a whole.

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

#203

Post by mlindner »

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.

That's how I already write messages. People can complain if they like.

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

#204

Post by dcminter »

anf0 wrote: post #193

Does anyone have any thoughts on date formats? E.g. d/m/y vs. m/d/y?

In prose, use month names (i.e. 1st Jan 1979, or Jan 1st 1970). Where numbers must be used for some reason use four-digit-year first if you can. If you can't use the dictated standard or, if there isn't one (raising the obvious question of why that would be), go with the form that will be familiar to most of your readers.

In other words, as with all things, prefer unambiguous forms but consider and respect your audience.

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

#205

Post by jgwil2 »

anf0 wrote: post #193

Does anyone have any thoughts on date formats? E.g. d/m/y vs. m/d/y?

How do British people pronounce the date that they write as 15 September, 2021? Americans write the date the same way we pronounce it (September 15), but this leads to the unfortunate mm/dd/yy style of abreviation.

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

#206

Post by marcus_holmes »

smeej wrote: post #156
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.

Supposing the sentence weren't complete on the first page but the quoted one were, is this what you would expect to see? "...and also look ugly.", In that case, the convention of placing just a comma inside the quotation marks if the quoted sentence were complete but the quoting sentence were not seems much cleaner.

Yes that's exactly what I'd expect to see.

    He said "I came in with the tide.", but she wasn't listening.
(which is correct according to my expensive British education) is very preferable to

    He said "I came in with the tide.," but she wasn't listening.
which has a full stop and comma next to each other and looks hideous.

However, I do personally think the full stop inside the quotes is redundant and would remove it, unless it made a real difference to the sentence meaning.

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

#207

Post by HWR_14 »

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

I've never seen a double period used to mean anything. An ellipsis is a specific mark made by three periods. Or is this a Britishism?

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

#208

Post by mdpm »

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.

think of it as a self-closing element. Like
became
.

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

#209

Post by soraminazuki »

eCa wrote: post #42
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…

Yes, this is the reason why, IMHO, the American way is objectively wrong. Aesthetics is in the eye of the beholder, but a quotation style that enforces incorrect quotations is not good.

It seems wrong because it is.

> Question marks and exclamation points have their own rules.

> If they apply to the quoted material, they go within the quotation marks. If they apply to the whole sentence, they go outside it

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/quotation-marks/

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