On Sun, 2003-11-02 at 19:13, Colin Watson wrote: > [Apologies if you didn't want a private copy of this mail; I haven't > worked out whether you read this mailing list.] > > On Sun, Nov 02, 2003 at 06:29:28PM -0500, Alexander Winston wrote: > > On Sun, 2003-11-02 at 16:23, Joey Hess wrote: > > > Alexander Winston wrote: > > > > Hello. It has come to my attention that you have requested English > > > > proofreading from native English speakers. While I have not looked over > > > > the Web site in great detail yet, a large error I have noticed that > > > > punctuation always seems to be missing from inside quotations. For > > > > example, I spotted this: > > > > > > > > no browser specific "extensions". > > > > > > > > In this case, it should read thusly: > > > > > > > > no browser-specific "extensions." > > > > > > This is common usage amoung technically inclined, to whom the exact > > > content of the quotation, right down to the punctuation, is often > > > very important. > > > > Regardless of how commonplace this usage is, it should not be accepted. > > Of course there are situations where punctuation exists in the original, > > but such predicaments can be explained away with a miniscule note from > > the editor without sacrificing the quality and the intended message. > > This is a disputed point of punctuation - in particular, standard modern > British English and American English usages differ - so "should not be > accepted" is too strong a statement. The style used on the Debian web > site is known as "logical quoting". Sources cite the "Oxford Dictionary > for Writers and Editors" as support, among others. > > I understand that the American style, with punctuation within quotations > marks, originated as a point of typography to make it easier to kern > combinations of quotation marks, commas, and full stops, not as a point > of grammatical correctness. Modern typography is better, which is > perhaps why logical quoting is regaining acceptance. > > Given the disagreement among style manuals (which is not an uncommon > occurrence anyway), I say go for the style that actually makes good > sense, namely quoting what you mean to quote. When the punctuation is > part of the quoted phrase, quote it; when it isn't, don't. Mr. Watson, I am subscribed to all of the mailing lists that I post to, so carbon copies will not be necessary in the future. Thank you. The following text is taken from The Chicago Manual of Style and is intended to shed more light on the situation, however biased said electromagnetic waves may be. CLOSING QUOTATION MARKS IN RELATION TO OTHER PUNCTUATION 6.8 Periods and commas. Periods and commas precede closing quotation marks, whether double or single. This is a traditional style, in use well before the first edition of this manual (1906). As nicely expressed in William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White's Elements of Style, "Typographical usage dictates that the comma be inside the [quotation] marks, though logically it often seems not to belong there" (bibliog. 1.1, p. 36). The same goes for the period. (An apostrophe at the end of a word should never be confused with a closing single quotation mark; punctuation always follow the apostrophe.) In the kind of textual studies where retaining the original placement of a comma in relation to closing quotation marks is essential to the author's argument and scholarly integrity, the alternative system described in 6.10 could be used, or rephrasing might avoid the problem. In computer-related writing, in which a file name or other character string enclosed in quotation marks might be rendered inaccurate or ambiguous by the addition of punctuation within the quotation marks, the alternative system may be used, or the character string may be se in another font, without quotation marks (see 7.79). For single versus double quotes, see 7.52, 7.58, 11.8, 11.33-35. For related matters in computer writing, see Eric S. Raymond, "Hacker Writing Style," in The New Hacker's Dictionary (bibliog. 5). 6.9 Colons, semicolons, question marks, and exclamation points. Unlike periods and commas, these all follow quotation marks unless a questino mark or an exclamation point belongs within the quoted matter. (This rule applies the logic absent in 6.8.) Take, for example, the first line of "To a Skylark": "Hail to thee, blithe spirit!" I was asked to state my "name and serial number"; I have no serial number. Which of Shakespeare's characters said, "All the world's a stage"? "Where are you from?" "Watch out!" 6.10 Alternate system. According to what is sometimes called the the British style (set forth in The Oxford Guide to Style [the succesor to Hart's Rules; see bibliog. 1.1]), a style also followed in other English-speaking countries, only those punctuation points that appeared in the original material should be included within the quotation marks; all others follow the closing quotation marks. This system, which requires extreme authorial precision and occasional decisions by the editor or typesetter, works best with single quotation marks. (The British tend to use double quotation marks only for quotations within quotations.)
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