Endangered Punctuation

[Goldie Munro]

More interesting (to me, at least), is the rise of the Logical Punctuation movement, which wants to change the rules about where commas go with respect to quotation marks. In the current American system, the following is correct:

We went to the movies and saw "Thor," and then went home.

The Logical Punctuation (and British) system would say,

We went to the movies and saw "Thor", and then went home.

The comma obviously applies to the entire first part of the of the sentence, so why should it be included within the quotation marks? The name of the movie isn't "Thor,"; it's "Thor". (And not "Thor." either.)


This is what Dr M said

 

[Pure]

?

"logical punctuation" seems a bit hyped, as a cause, in my opinion.

the american practice is due to aesthetics, in the opinion of many (including me).

http://www.slate.com/id/2293056/

the slate article, however, gives one clear set of cases where punctuation should go outside of quotation marks: in computer programming, generally, what's inside these marks is taken literally, character for character. Hence** Print "Title." would yield a title with a period following it.

the article concludes with the Chicago Manual folks opining as to when a change to 'logical' might occur for final periods: "never."

===

** assuming each coded instruction is to end with a period.

 

[sr71plt]

More interesting (to me, at least), is the rise of the Logical Punctuation movement, which wants to change the rules about where commas go with respect to quotation marks. In the current American system, the following is correct:

We went to the movies and saw "Thor," and then went home.

The Logical Punctuation (and British) system would say,

We went to the movies and saw "Thor", and then went home.

The comma obviously applies to the entire first part of the of the sentence, so why should it be included within the quotation marks? The name of the movie isn't "Thor,"; it's "Thor". (And not "Thor." either.)


This is what Dr M said

Yes, and I said his example isn't proper American style, so it doesn't make his point. That the second clause isn't an independent clause, so the comma isn't needed at all. And it's not a comma splice either. A comma splice is indexed to two independent clauses. And the point here is that what Dr. M. provided in the example aren't two independent clauses.

And then you said I was wrong.

So?

This wasn't about what Dr. M. posted. It was about what you posted to me (you quoted me in your post, not Dr. M)

If you really want this to just stop, why did you resurrect the argument?

 

[ishtat]

Doc said this is correct:

We went to the movies and saw "Thor," and then went home.
----
Sr71 says this is correct:
//Perhaps you mean:

We went to the movies and saw "Thor", and then we went home.//
------

Leyna says sr71 is incorrect due to 'comma splice', and [I think] this is correct:

We went to the movies and saw "Thor"; and then we went home.

Leyna: Not to quibble, but this example is actually a "comma splice":

We went to the movies and saw "Thor", and then we went home.
There should be a semicolon or a period after Thor.

[L did not mention that, following her approach, deleting the "and"
would be highly desirable.]

====
pure says, this is correct, though a bit affected:

P: We went to the movies and saw "Thor" and then went home.

leyna, you are not using 'comma splice' in its usual sense.
http://depts.dyc.edu/learningcenter/owl/comma_splices.htm

Sr's version is not actually a comma splice.

The version I prefer is: We thought about going to the movies, to see Thor, but on the way were ambushed by a bunch of punctuation storm troopers; so we said "That's it, full stop( period) and got outa' the thread fast.

 

[sr71plt]

We thought about going to the movies,[delete comma] to see Thor[change to Thor. (italics)], but on the way, we were ambushed by a bunch of punctuation storm troopers; so we said, "That's it, full stop( period) and got outa' the thread fast."

There, I corrected it for you.

 

[Boxlicker101]

In the sentence being bandied about now, you don't even need that comma, which is either inside the quotation mark or outside it. You can say: We went to the movies, saw "Thor" and then went home.

This is an example of the Oxford comma, the subject of the thread, except it is a series of actions rather than nouns.

 

[ishtat]

We thought about going to the movies,[delete comma] to see Thor[change to Thor. (italics)], but on the way, we were ambushed by a bunch of punctuation storm troopers; so we said, "That's it, full stop( period) and got outa' the thread fast."

There, I corrected it for you.

Good boy. Give yourself a gold star. I'm glad you didn't query the full stop though.

Now SR, what shall we award to the poster who picks the style error(s), which you obviously spotted but kindly ignored?

It would be quite interesting to see who could come up with the most interesting misinterpretation based on wrong or debatable punctuation.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Good boy. Give yourself a gold star. I'm glad you didn't query the full stop though.

Now SR, what shall we award to the poster who picks the style error(s), which you obviously spotted but kindly ignored?

It would be quite interesting to see who could come up with the most interesting misinterpretation based on wrong or debatable punctuation.

How about this situation, which I think actually happened a long time ago:

A woman saw a very expensive piece of art at what she thought was a good price and sent a telegram to her husband asking if she could buy it. He wired back saying: NO. PRICE TOO MUCH.

She bought it anyhow, and when he got pissed off at her spending so much, she showed him the telegram he had sent. It said: NO PRICE TOO MUCH.