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This is quite specific to US English, for example "Top Ten Tips" number 2 about quotation marks. As Robert Bringhurst says in The Elements of Typographic Style:
by ranko 9y ago
This is quite specific to US English, for example "Top Ten Tips" number 2 about quotation marks. As Robert Bringhurst says in The Elements of Typographic Style:
Most North American editors like their commas and periods inside the raised
commas, "like this;" but their colons and semicolons outside. Many
British editors prefer to put all punctuation outside, with the milk
and the cat.
- teddyh 9y agohttp://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html > 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); however, it is counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong in them. Given the sorts of examples that can come up in discussions of programming, American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading. When communicating command lines or small pieces of code, extra characters can be a real pain in the neck.
- hhjkjhkjhhlkj 9y agoI find the changing stuff that is a quotation at odds with the whole point of quoting something. I'm from the UK so the guide is actually unhelpful for me as it introduces what I'd see as bad practices. Also an ellipses is a special character not 3 full stops, even if they are a good substitute.
- rocqua 9y agoI guess that makes me a 'hacker'. I can see why we the old way might look nicer, but the hacker way is simply more precise.
- hanbura 9y agoArguments for British style quotes: - doesn't mutate the quoted string - fewer weird edge cases - encodes more information in same amount of characters (if quote might have ended on punctuation) - needs fewer rules Arguments for American style quotes - It looks more balanced if punctuation marks that use less ink than a quotation mark come before it I think there is no surprise that hackers prefer the straight-forward way that might look marginally worse
- Harvey-Specter 9y agoIn the British style what is the rule if the quotation ends in punctuation? Do they include additional punctuation outside the quotation, since presumably the punctuation inside the quotation doesn't count as ending the sentence? I'm thinking of a sentence like: > Bill said "I prefer American style." Would the British write it as follows? > Bill said "I prefer American style.".
- dghf 9y agoNo, we'd write it the first way, even if the quotation ended with punctuation not appropriate to the sentence as a whole: e.g. > Bill asked "Do you prefer American style?" even though the sentence, taken as a whole, is a statement rather than a question.
- ghaff 9y agoI assume that American-style quotes came about for typographic/aesthetic reasons. I agree that the British approach seems more logical and straightforward overall.
- booleandilemma 9y agoThe guide is for American punctuation. The author has a page explaining the British versus American styles here: http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/british-versus-american-style.html http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/british-versus-american-s...
- open-source-ux 9y agoNot mentioned in the guide: in the UK very few people use the term 'parentheses', instead they just say brackets. Similarly, 'curly braces' is simply 'curly brackets'. And following on from that, you have 'square brackets' (same as US). UK: - Brackets () - Curly brackets {} - Square brackets [] US: - Parentheses () - Curly braces {} - Square brackets []
- AlbertoGP 9y agoThanks for this! I'm Spanish, live in Germany, and speak English regularly with other non-native speakers: this causes a lot of confusion. What I've ended up doing: - Parentheses () - Braces {} - Brackets [] It's good to know that, however economic this might look to me, it's still likely to be misunderstood or at least ambiguous even to native speakers.
- dghf 9y agoA couple of things that page doesn't get quite right: > Mr., Mrs., and Ms. all take periods in American English. In British English, the periods are omitted. Common British practice omits full stops after any abbreviation (not just these three titles) where the last letter is the same as the last letter of the unabbreviated word: so Dr, Lt, hr aren't followed by full stops but Prof., Capt., sec. are. In fact it's becoming more and more common to omit full stops after abbreviations entirely: this is the Guardian's house style, for example. > British usage dictates a period between the hours and minutes when writing the time (e.g., 10.30). American usage dictates a colon (e.g., 10:30). Usage varies, but a colon is far more common with the 24-hour clock (e.g. 15:00 rather than 15.00).