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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

#281

Post by munchbunny »

Veen wrote: post #201
munchbunny wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absolutely agree. It's probably the biggest disconnect I feel between how ideas are structured in my head and how to best communicate them in written format.

Parentheticals in English sit in this sort of midpoint between a modifying clause for necessary elaboration and a footnote/end-note for optional detail, and lots of people including me use parentheses where "inlining" the parentheses or moving them to a footnote would be more appropriate. That's in addition to conventional uses of parentheses, like to expand abbreviations.

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

#282

Post by a9h74j »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #258
floatingatoll wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What benefit does the reader draw from being informed “this quoted phrase is a complete sentence”? It’s not futile to reconsider conventions, no matter that demands may go ignored.

Floatingatoll said "It's not futile to reconsider conventions". This shows that's not a complete sentence, suggesting that you added a caveat or other clause. Also, your preceding paragraph highlights another issue: what if the sentence being quoted has different punctuation than the sentence it's placed in? You wrote a sentence that should end in a question mark, but the quote should end with a period.

Good illustration, but also brings into scope the [sadly disappearing?] ethical requirement of not misleading with abbreviated or out-of-context quotations.

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

#283

Post by some_random »

I'm going to be entirely honest, this seems like a complete waste of time for everyone involved. The point of writing is to communicate, and I don't see how the position of punctuation in relation to quotation marks affects the understanding of the communication to the reader. Just pick one and stick with it.

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

#284

Post by vzaliva »

Learning English I found American quotation style very weird. It would be interesing to know if any nother language do something like this and where this traidition comes from. We certainly do not do this in russian and ukrainian I've learned in school.

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

#285

Post by a9h74j »

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.

To me it looks wrong to omit a period in a famous short one-sentence statement. To stay within American style, I would rearrange the sentence to end with the quote, "I refute it thus."

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

#286

Post by a9h74j »

dragonwriter wrote: post #211
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.

> I think it’s weird that a punctuation mark inside a quote can end the sentence that contains the quote. It doesn't. The end quote with a period inside it ends the sentence. > I’d argue like this: in the above case there are two sentences There aren't. English doesn't nest or overlap sentences. Ever. Therr are plenty of ways in which English combines multiple units which each could otherwise be their own sentences i…

Not even parenthetical remarks with opening and closing parentheses or mdashes?

I won't say it isn't so (that would be redundant), but this example makes my point again.

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

#287

Post by Tsiklon »

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…

I think you're right;

> Why did Jake believe the AI was "going to kill us all?"

This reads, to me, like Jake's quoted sentence was originally a question. If the original sentence was an assertion or a statement, then you're right this fundamentally changes the meaning and strength of Jake's sentence.

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

#288

Post by TillE »

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 ;-)

A weird thing British papers do is de-capitalize acronyms. It's a useful signal for pronunciation, but it's also just...wrong? Like, the agency is called NASA, not Nasa.

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

#289

Post by bhandziuk »

ctrlp wrote: post #184

This makes sense to me and looks good. Some other quote style ideas: - use double quotes when quoting something someone said or wrote; use single quotes when emphasizing a jargony word or words, or a short paraphrase (e.g. 'materialist philosophy'). - use double quotes for "scare quotes" because the doubling acts as emphasis markers and is pantomimable with two fingers (one-fingered air-quotes look ridiculous). - use…

What's the difference between scare quotes and a short catch phrase?

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

#290

Post by sebastialonso »

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…

wow, your instructor is an idiot.
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