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Now, Truss and I disagree on what it means to have "zero tolerance." She thinks that people who mix up their itses "deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up
by mkup 14y ago
Now, Truss and I disagree on what it means to have "zero tolerance." She thinks that people who mix up their itses "deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave," while I just think they deserve to be passed over for a job — even if they are otherwise qualified for the position.
Putting comma inside quotation like the above could make grammar nazis happy, but when your newly hired programmer treats all algebraic operations as commutative, it will do no good to your company. Code is not a prose, and coders are not writers.
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoI've never understood this putting punctuation that isn't part of a quote inside the quotation marks. It seems both wrong in terms of verity and in terms of logically constructing prose. Can someone explain a rationale for this proclivity ?
- AkThhhpppt 14y agoBecause that's How It's Done. Programmers are almost the only people who routinely break it - because we're used to quoted strings being atomic units.
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoSo there's no rationale beyond convention? Other linguistic conventions get changed so why is this one sticking around and why do its supporters promote it - is the more logical [to me] method somehow confusing?
- adavies42 14y agoit's old printers' stuff to do with physical properties of lead type, i think. as to why it won't go away, i have no idea. i happily ignore it in almost all my writing....
- AkThhhpppt 14y agoInertia, I assume.
- nollidge 14y agoThat's not a grammar rule, it's a typographic one, and therefore subject to the house style of your publisher.
- pbhjpbhj 14y agoI'm not sure you can say it's typographic. One still uses quotations in handwritten prose where there is no arrangement of "type" per se. It seems syntactical to me but perhaps is best categorised as orthography?