Colin Watson wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 07, 2002 at 01:23:27PM -0400, Daniel Barclay wrote:
> > From: Thanasis Kinias <tkinias@optimalco.com>
> > > ... the placement of quotation marks inside of punctuation come to
> > > mind.
> >
> > I've seen that a lot for computer-related quotes. Is that
> > more common in UK English for non-computer-related quoting?
>
> My impression is that quotation marks inside punctuation is more common.
> That said, I seem to remember being taught the opposite at school.
My personal usage tends to place punctuation inside our outside quotes
depending on whether it seems to belong. The Jargon File quote you gave:
To delete a line in vi, type "dd".
was a good example of when to place punctuation outside quotes, because
it would be confusing to put it inside, and the punctuation isn't
logically part of the quoted material. On the other hand, in a sentence
like this:
John said, "I don't speak French."
John has stated a complete sentence, and the concluding period, though
unspoken, is logically part of that sentence, and so I place it inside
the quotes.
Of course, this gets slightly ugly if John's complete sentence isn't
actually the end of the sentence as written, as in:
"I don't speak French," said John.
Here, John's sentence really ought to end with a period, but it ends
with a comma because unquoted material follows in the same written
sentence. Unfortunately, there's no really good way out of this one; the
obvious alternative
"I don't speak French.", said John.
is hideous.
Always placing the period outside the quotes actually would clean this up
a bit:
John said, "I don't speak French".
"I don't speak French", said John.
This is consistent, but not traditionally considered correct. Natural
languages, sadly, are not generally exemplars of clean and elegant
design. Punctuation is the least of most languages' problems in this
regard; irregular verbs are much nastier.
Craig
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