Quotes & Periods

[dr_mabeuse]

Which is correct?

Lon Chaney was "the man of a thousand faces".

Lon Chaney was "the man of a thousand faces."

I was always taught that the second was correct, but I refuse to follow this rule because it makes no sense to me.

Can anyone explain the rationale for this to me?

---dr.M.

 

[Weird Harold]

I was always taught that the second was correct, but I refuse to follow this rule because it makes no sense to me.

I've always used punctuation inside thye quotes because I went through the American school system and that's the way I was taught and that's the convention used by most of the authors I read.

I do know that MS Word and WordPerfect allow you to specify which convention to use when checking spelling and grammar, so I presume that somewhere (England?) punctuation outside of the quotation marks is the approved convention.

I don't think it really matters which convention you use as long as you're consistent. Putting the punctuation outside will cause more feedback that you're "doing it wrong" becuase inside is is the more common usage, but that's the same kind of feedback the English authors get for spelling "Humour" and "Colour" the way they were taught.

 

[TheEarl]

Sorry WH, but the second is always correct in England. The first is considered very bad grammar. Why doesn't the second make any sense to you, Dr M?

The Earl

 

[ronde]

This is only my opinion, but the first is logical to me. The quotes are used to denote a title or to highlight the words from the rest of the sentence; italics could have been used to perform the same function. Another example would be:

To say the words "honest politician" would be an oxymoron.

This would make no sense if written:

To say the words "honest politician would be an oxymoron."

Dialogue is a different story. Quotes go outside the punctuation, and this is logical because dialogue is normally a complete sentence or sentences.

 

[TheEarl]

Ronde: AFAIK, the quotes just go to the end of the bit that is to be quoted. If there is punctuation immediately after the quote, then the punctuation is included in the quote marks. I was taught that punctuation never goes outside the quote marks, under any circumstances.

Therefore: She said that "an example of an oxymoron is 'an honest politician.'"
Not: She said that "an example of an oxymoron is 'an honest politician'."

Can't comment on American grammar, but that it how the English do it.

The Earl

Edited due to sheer inability to use italics properly.

 

[Weird Harold]

Sorry WH, but the second is always correct in England. The first is considered very bad grammar. Why doesn't the second make any sense to you, Dr M?

The Earl

England was speculation on mypart as to why both MS Word and WordPerfect allow setting the grammar check to put the punctuation outside the quotes -- the point is that there must be some place or circumstance where it is considered correct for both of the major word processors to include the option.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I'll tell you why I feel that the quotes should go within the period.

The period marks the end of the sentence. If the entire senetence is a quote, then of course the period belongs in the quotes. But the term being quoted is part of the sentence. Therefore, the quotes belong inside the period.

Look at it in terms of algebraic parentheses and brackets. Which is right?

(Lon Chaney was [the man of a thousand faces])

(Lon Chaney was [the man of a thousand faces)]

To me, it's #1. The parentheses indicate the start and stop of the sentence, the square brackets represent the quotes.

Makes sense to me. That's what's scary.

---dr.M.

 

[TheEarl]

In your example the first one is right, yeah. With brackets, it's a completely different rule though (punctuation always goes outside brackets). I see what you're saying, but AFAIK punctuation always lands inside the quote marks. Just one of the vagarities of the English language.

The Earl

 

[dr_mabeuse]

& Another Thing

Here's another reason for not abiding by the period-within-the-quotes nonsense.

One of the things quotation marks are used for is to set off text that is copied verbatim from another source. What happens to this fidelity when the original doesn't include a period at the end but you're forced to insert one by this rule?

e.g. He started quoting Coleridge: "Water, water everywhere."

You see?
Now do you appreciate what an earth-shaking issue this is? We must rise up everywhere and march under the banner "Quotes within the period".

---dr.M.

 

[karmadog]

I'm no grammar expert, but I think the good doctor is correct. I believe that the punctuation in side the quotation mark rule is for dialogue rather than for quoted material.

 

[karmadog]

NOTE: Some writers draw a distinction between periods and commas that belong logically to the quoted material and those that belong to the whole sentence. If the period or comma belongs to the quoted material, they place it inside the quotation marks; if the period belongs logically to the sentence that surrounds the quoted matter, they place it outside the quotation marks. This distinction was previously observed in a wide range of publications, including U.S. Congressional publications and Merriam-Webster(R) dictionaries. In current practice, the distinction is made in relatively few publications, although the distinction is routinely made for dashes, exclamation points, and question marks

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Excerpted from The Complete Reference Collection
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Apparently, the doc and I are living in the past, but I'm not likely to change how I do it unless I am submitting to a publication that I know prefers it the other way.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I admit that the rule[/A] is that the period goes inside the quote.

But I maintain the rule is silly and, worse, obfuscatory and arbitrary and therefore need not be observed.

Anyone who is familiar with how the rules of grammar became canonized knows that much if not most were adopted rather arbitrarily and by whim. There is, of course, no law-making insitution for the rules of grammar, nor is there much of an an interinal consistency. This is a case where I think an arbitrary decision was made, and it was the wrong one.

---dr.M.