3 ms·

> Bezos forwarded it to your boss, with only a single character added: "?." As an armchair typographer, I think we need to stop insisting on placing sentence-t

> Bezos forwarded it to your boss, with only a single character added: "?." As an armchair typographer, I think we need to stop insisting on placing sentence-terminating periods inside quotation marks. It would have been clearer this way. > Bezos forwarded it to your boss, with only a single character added: "?".

bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
It doesn't even make sense. The sentence containing the quotation only ends when the quotation itself ends, not before. `print("abc)"`
- junofan 4y ago
 It’s a tradition from the fixed-width font typewriter era IIRC. Quote mark followed by period looked bad because of all the whitespace.
 - jle17 4y ago
 I wish we would do away with those nonsense traditions. I tend to ignore them but some correction softwares don't like it. Especially since they are incoherent between languages with no good reasons. English wants the dot in the quotes, French wants a space before colons, yada yada
 - Kaze404 4y ago
 Is it? I've only ever seen this phenomenon in English text, and it's definitely not a thing in Portuguese.
 - asplake 4y ago
 In the US (and Canada?). British English puts commas and periods (full stops) outside the quotation marks unless the quotation is also a complete sentence or the punctuation is part of the quotation. Source: https://www.unr.edu/writing-speaking-center/student-resources/writing-speaking-resources/british-american-english https://www.unr.edu/writing-speaking-center/student-resource...
- thrown_22 4y ago
 You're assuming a context free grammar, this is a context sensitive grammar. Much like being bold being both being italic is a malformed CFG but a perfectly valid CSG. Ironically it's the one advantage XML type notation has over Lisp type notation when it comes to expressiveness. It's rather unfortunate that, essentially, all XML tools assume proper nesting.

bobbylarrybobby 4y ago

It doesn't even make sense. The sentence containing the quotation only ends when the quotation itself ends, not before. `print("abc)"`

junofan 4y ago
It’s a tradition from the fixed-width font typewriter era IIRC. Quote mark followed by period looked bad because of all the whitespace.
- jle17 4y ago
  I wish we would do away with those nonsense traditions. I tend to ignore them but some correction softwares don't like it. Especially since they are incoherent between languages with no good reasons. English wants the dot in the quotes, French wants a space before colons, yada yada
- Kaze404 4y ago
  Is it? I've only ever seen this phenomenon in English text, and it's definitely not a thing in Portuguese.
- asplake 4y ago
  In the US (and Canada?). British English puts commas and periods (full stops) outside the quotation marks unless the quotation is also a complete sentence or the punctuation is part of the quotation. Source: https://www.unr.edu/writing-speaking-center/student-resources/writing-speaking-resources/british-american-english https://www.unr.edu/writing-speaking-center/student-resource...
thrown_22 4y ago
You're assuming a context free grammar, this is a context sensitive grammar. Much like being bold being both being italic is a malformed CFG but a perfectly valid CSG. Ironically it's the one advantage XML type notation has over Lisp type notation when it comes to expressiveness. It's rather unfortunate that, essentially, all XML tools assume proper nesting.