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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

#301

Post by soheil »

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…

> The end quote with a period inside it ends the sentence.

What a weird interpretation. Two characters shouldn't be needed to end a sentence, only a period can end a sentence. It'd be a lot easier to postulate the period inside ends the sentence and the quotation mark ends the quote that just ran outside the end of the sentence by one character.

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

#302

Post by ARandomerDude »

SllX wrote: post #279
teddyh wrote: post #273

Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses, much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if “Jim is going” is a phrase, and so are “Bill runs” and “Spock groks”, then hackers generally prefer to write: “Jim is going”, “Bill runs”, and “Spock groks”. This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the string quotes); h…

It’s an æsthetic choice in the end. If I could put the period below the quotation mark, then I would do so as I already do in writing.

> It’s an æsthetic choice in the end.

Æsthetic is misplaced pedantry, since the word comes from Greek through German, rather than Latin.

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=aesthetic

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

#303

Post by DonHopkins »

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.

Yes, that's better and more logical, because it also handles the case where the final punctuation of the outer sentence and quoted sentence is different, like when Dr. Johnson asked "I refute it thus?"!

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

#304

Post by TechBro8615 »

teddyh wrote: post #273

Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses, much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if “Jim is going” is a phrase, and so are “Bill runs” and “Spock groks”, then hackers generally prefer to write: “Jim is going”, “Bill runs”, and “Spock groks”. This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the string quotes); h…

That’s why we have backticks for inline code to resolve this ambiguity.

Also, by this and the author’s argument, shouldn’t there actually be two periods? One inside the quote and one outside? (The author does address this, to their credit.).

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

#306

Post by quesera »

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?

Also awkward:

Did you ask, "Is this your dog?"?

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

#307

Post by esquivalience »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #302
SllX wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an æsthetic choice in the end. If I could put the period below the quotation mark, then I would do so as I already do in writing.

> It’s an æsthetic choice in the end. Æsthetic is misplaced pedantry, since the word comes from Greek through German, rather than Latin. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=aesthetic

This is all sorts of meta.

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

#308

Post by nicwolff »

laborat wrote: post #36
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…

But what would you do if Dr Johnson was surprised, and you yourself were shouting, i.e.: Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded: “I refute it thus?”! AFAICS, the only way to render this faithfully is the way I just did. In other words, you really do need the punctuation both of the outer sentence and the inner sentence. By extension, the only logical approach for the original sentence would be…

Eh? Standard American and British usage is the same with regard to quotes that span multiple paragraphs. Given that it's understood that speakers can alternate without each quote being attributed, e.g.:

Bob said: "Any opinion on this, John?"

John said: "I have two things to say."

"What are they?"

"One of these things is this.

"The other thing is this."

– how would you punctuate that? If you close each paragraph with a quote, then there's no way to tell who's speaking except to label each paragraph:

Bob said: "Any opinion on this, John?"

John said: "I have two things to say."

Bob asked: "What are they?"

John answered: "One of these things is this."

John continued: "The other thing is this."

And if you don't open each quoted paragraph with a quote, it's very hard to tell which paragraphs are quoted:

John said: "I have two things to say.

One of these things is this.

The other thing is this."

The third thing, he kept to himself.

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

#309

Post by tablespoon »

teddyh wrote: post #273

Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses, much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if “Jim is going” is a phrase, and so are “Bill runs” and “Spock groks”, then hackers generally prefer to write: “Jim is going”, “Bill runs”, and “Spock groks”. This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the string quotes); h…

I just use American-style except in cases where it would introduce confusion, since it does in fact look better on the page.

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

#310

Post by yosito »

esquivalience wrote: post #307
ARandomerDude wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s an æsthetic choice in the end. Æsthetic is misplaced pedantry, since the word comes from Greek through German, rather than Latin. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=aesthetic

This is all sorts of meta.

*metæ
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