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> ...you shouldn't use punc-quote formatting... it seems like this is a really basic idea, but a web search is failing to explain to me what "punc-quote" forma

> ...you shouldn't use punc-quote formatting... it seems like this is a really basic idea, but a web search is failing to explain to me what "punc-quote" formatting means. I get that it refers to how a command should be parsed, and how punctuation affects it, but can you give me a link to a formal explanation?

anyfoo 6y ago
Nothing to do with parsing commands, just with writing sentences in articles (or elsewhere). It’s the difference between having punctuation that is not part of a quote in the quote, like when I said last Tuesday to “not do it like this,” or outside of them, “like this”. The former is supposedly the “correct” way, at least in English, but you can see from my explanation that I’m absolute against it. I’m sorry, it’s just wrong on so many levels, and whoever invented it were not understanding what they were doing.
monocasa 6y ago
It's just how formal US English requires quite a bit of punctuation to be inside the quotes, even if the punctuation isn't being quoted. https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/08/punctuating-around-quotation-marks.html https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/08/punctuating-aroun... This rule is obvs not super composable, and leads to a lot of confusion when punctuation (or lack thereof) is part of what you're trying to quote.
teddyh 6y ago
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. — http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/writing-style.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/writing-style.html

anyfoo 6y ago

Nothing to do with parsing commands, just with writing sentences in articles (or elsewhere). It’s the difference between having punctuation that is not part of a quote in the quote, like when I said last Tuesday to “not do it like this,” or outside of them, “like this”. The former is supposedly the “correct” way, at least in English, but you can see from my explanation that I’m absolute against it. I’m sorry, it’s just wrong on so many levels, and whoever invented it were not understanding what they were doing.

monocasa 6y ago

It's just how formal US English requires quite a bit of punctuation to be inside the quotes, even if the punctuation isn't being quoted. https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/08/punctuating-around-quotation-marks.html https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/08/punctuating-aroun... This rule is obvs not super composable, and leads to a lot of confusion when punctuation (or lack thereof) is part of what you're trying to quote.

teddyh 6y ago

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. — http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/writing-style.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/writing-style.html