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

331–340 of 393 posts

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

#331

Post by ctrlp »

bhandziuk wrote: post #289
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?

Scare quotes are emotion/sense markers. They suggest irony, sarcasm, "skepticism", etc... A short phrase is just a short phrase.

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

#332

Post by odiroot »

soheil wrote: post #300
odiroot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote my whole master thesis as you describe. It was logical to me. Then my promotor complained that it's not correct so I had to go through whole 100+ pages to correct all the instances.

/\."\./, /\."/

I also did the same for parenthesis, so would need to double the cases :)

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

#333

Post by joemi »

quesera wrote: post #306
JasonFruit wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?"?

I do wonder if that kind of thing is awkward just because we're not used to it...

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

#334

Post by aaroninsf »

Orthography in specific and natural language in general (formalized and written, or otherwise) is not beholden to be "logical;"

idiosyncratic deviance from established cultural norms looks adolescent in anything other than a private subculture.

Specifically in American English, which unlike French French or German German, does not have a state-sanctioned standards body attempting (and often failing) to police or mandate its evolution.

Earnest advice for those tempted to adopt "logical" style in American English language written communication: adhere to the standards.

Relevant: https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/Blog/Item/Ruzvelt%20...

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

#335

Post by robocat »

lostgame wrote: post #267
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.

This rubs me wrong in all the ways and is aesthetically jarring as all hell to me. If I’m reading a book or essay and I come across this type of punctuation, it actually actively removes me from my flow of reading and causes me to stop for a moment and lose immersion - same with obvious spelling and grammatical errors. It’s amazing how dependent our reading immersion is on proper grammar, spelling and punctuation.

> aesthetically

I prefer to think it is what you are accustomed to, or habituated to.

From these comments a number of people including me, prefer to use the .”. form because we find that more aesthetically pleasing. I had discovered the .”. form myself because I play with my punctuation (and words and grammar), and until this discussion I hadn’t noticed others use .”.*.

I presume other other programmers play with syntax and punctuation too.

* Note I have italicised .”. and if you zoom on an iPad the full stops [US periods] change from squares to rhombusы.

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

#336

Post by nitrogen »

hjek wrote: post #151
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the only element of style that may seem illogical, there are many more. Off the top of my head: * Nested parentheses. (In theory, you could use any level needed (provided that they make sense), but in practice, they're scoffed at.) It is similar with quotes, for the same reasons: limited readability - although here you can at least juggle with single, double and French quotes, depending on the language and s…

> * Nested parentheses. (In theory, you could use any level needed (provided that they make sense), but in practice, they're scoffed at.) It is similar with quotes, for the same reasons: limited readability - although here you can at least juggle with single, double and French quotes, depending on the language and style guide used. Any level of nested parenthesis is fine (is what I think at least (as someone who's wr…

There's not really a $()-like syntax for written English though.

There sort of is, if you use "smart" quotes. “Hard to find on a phone keyboard though, and not that distinct.”

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

#337

Post by robotresearcher »

tablespoon wrote: post #309
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.

Not if you are used to the British style.

Here's something that might clinch it for you:

Does this "look better on the page"?

Does this "look better on the page?"

The former must be correct, since the quote was not a question, and turning it into one would not be a fair quotation. Why should its status as a question change where we put the end of sentence marker?

The same argument applies to the period, since the quoted phrase may not have included one.

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

#338

Post by rjsw »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #323
rjsw wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that irritates me is seeing "foreign" quoting styles in English, do editors or keyboard settings do this automatically ? If I'm writing French then I will use «quote», I don't mix things between languages.

I could say the same about punctuation spacing. For some reason, I see this mistake a lot in some places like Quora (which is popular in India): "Putting the space before punctuation ,like this .It drives me nuts .How could anyone ever think that is correct ?" Also, French conventions like putting the dollar sign after the amount (123$), or spaces in between all punctuation, like you used in your first sentence.

> Also, French conventions like ... or spaces in between all punctuation, like you used in your first sentence.

I'm a native English speaker, French is my second language.

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

#339

Post by montag »

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 have to say, a career in software engineering has destroyed my enthusiasm for this typographically-motivated punctuation rule. And I had no idea it was just an American thing.

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

#340

Post by floatingatoll »

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.

So, when a quoted sentence fragment terminates a sentence, the period should be outside?

> Blah blah "Quoted sentence in entirety."

versus

> Blah blah "Quoted sentence fragment".

Post reply on HN