I just got whomped on an online forum for writing: And he responded with an emphatic "No".
Don't see anything wrong with that? Neither did I -- but American style (Chicago Manual of Style) insists that the period goes inside the quote marks, pretty much no matter what. My sentence shoud have been, And he responded with an emphatic "No." This looks...unfinished to me.
British English (Oxford Style) is almost the opposite: only put the period in the quotes if the period is actually part of the quoted matter. Or any punctuation for that matter. I apparently read too many British-published books.
Why is this interesting enough to post? Well, I found out why the American style is .", period insid the quote no matter what -- it has nothing to do with grammar, really. Instead, it is a typesetting rule. To make typesetting easier and keep the little teeny period bits from falling over or shifting in a line of type, the period and quote were either put on the same slug, or the period was squashed between the word and the quotation mark to keep it from falling off. Simple expediency.
So, the rule is changing slowly, since we don't actually set type any longer as physical bits.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
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5 comments:
No way -- that's the difference? I have also gotten busted for doing it (apparently) the British way. I think it makes more sense to have the period inside the quote only if it is supposed to be there. Also, if the quote is just one word, why should there be a period there?
Huoh - wow! I now understand why I see it both ways. I have now learned my new thing for the day! I can go back to bed now. Oh wait, I have infant twin girls. There is no going back to bed..... ;)
That is quite interesting. Although I'm not sure "physical typesetting?!.:;," (just wanted to cover my punctuational bases) makes much difference. My one and only scientific article had to go through a painful typesetting process, despite the fact that I submitted all materials electronically and I'm sure all the intermediate steps are electronic. It will indeed be interesting to see if the rules change now that the original justification is gone.
One could cite, in this context, the old saw about the size of the Space Shuttle's booster rockets being set by the width of Roman cartways, except unfortunately that would be wrong. So we'll just have to satisfy ourselves with the knowledge that reasons may fade, but some rules go on forever....
Humph. Go with what you know is correct. The correct way is to have the period outside the quotes. So there.
School teacher Ruth
Yes - physical typesetting. Back in the Dark Ages I was an editor of our weekly high school newspaper. Every Wednesday we would go to the printers in downtown Minneapolis to get our paper set up. We would give the linotype machine operator our stories. He would use something that looked like a big typewriter, but it shot into place individual metal letters and punctuation pieces.
After handsetting the headlines, they would make galleys for us to proof. Then the printing could go ahead.
So, yes, I can see that a period might get lost...
Ruth
Ha! I've actually seen those big typesetting machines, and my father's office had an old table for hand-setting type and that huge table of little compartments for each letter.
I still have horrible nightmares about having to sort all the letters in a big book (which have fallen off the page!) into those little compartments....
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