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before you care about that question, you should ask yourself, "should it?." BTW: Am I doing this little american grammatical quirk with the punctuation within
by conceit 11y ago
before you care about that question, you should ask yourself, "should it?."
BTW: Am I doing this little american grammatical quirk with the punctuation within quotes right?
- mindcrime 11y agoAm I doing this little american grammatical quirk with the punctuation within quotes right? Well, since the question part is quoted, I believe the '?' should go inside the quotation marks in this case. But I think most Americans would put the period outside of the quotes, or leave it off altogether in that case. It's one of those things where I doubt anybody (other than an English teacher) actually knows the formal rule for sure. If there even is a rule. :-)
- dj-wonk 11y agohttp://djwonk.tumblr.com/post/29687578295/silly-punctuation-rules-in-english http://djwonk.tumblr.com/post/29687578295/silly-punctuation-...
- CalRobert 11y agoIf memory serves, style guides suggest putting the punctuation inside the quotation marks, even if the punctuation applies to the larger sentence. This, of course, is dumb if you think about it. print "What an absurd convention!;"
- mindcrime 11y agoIf memory serves, style guides suggest putting the punctuation inside the quotation marks, even if the punctuation applies to the larger sentence. Yeah, I've definitely seen that, but I've always thought of that as one of those controversial points where there's no real agreement. I feel like I remember this coming up on HN before and leading to quite a lot of discussion, although I might be mis-remembering.
- CalRobert 11y agoI've ignored it my entire adult life and haven't been corrected on it. Similarly, my stepmother once insisted I was committing a grave error not using two spaces after a period, but ignoring her advice has been for the best.
- bpyne 11y agoNot quite. You need to capitalize the S and remove the period. We don't typically use double punctuation. Frankly, the whole phrasing of that statement would be very bizarre from an American's standpoint. We would typically say something along the lines of "Is the question worth caring about?" It's more concise and doesn't emulate an inner dialog. More to your larger point, the placement of punctuation within quotes, while grammatically correct, has the feel of leaving a sentence incomplete.
- timthorn 11y agoBut to a British ear, the phrasing of your sentence is good. It creates the link between the two questions, not suggesting that the original question is not of value, but placing a qualifier on it.
- kagamine 11y agoAs a Brit: You should ask yourself, "should it?".
- SixSigma 11y agoOr, as another Brit: You should ask yourself: "should it?"
- kagamine 11y agoA colon?! A COLON?! Are you sure that should be there?
- roymurdock 11y agoPersonally, I would go with the em dash. You should ask yourself -- "Am I sure that colon should be there?".
- gardano 11y agoShould I ask myself, "Do I love this rabbit hole?"? Edit: The answer is YES.
- mattlutze 11y agoDepending on the style guide (punctuation in English is unfortunately not universal), all you need to do is drop the period. Give a few of these pages a read if you'd like to really get into it: From Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS style), "Q: This may be impossible": http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Punctuation.html http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Pu... From Modern Language Association (MLA style), https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/03/ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/03/ From American Psychological Association (APA style), http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/08/punctuating-around-quotation-marks.html http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/08/punctuating-around...