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Subject:Re: Period/comma then close quote, or vice versa? From:"T.W. Smith" <techwordsmith -at- gmail -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 7 Apr 2005 09:40:10 -0400
As an aside, I once worked at a place that was merged with another
place. I used US-convention for punctuation, and both places were in
the USA with little to no international sales. Still, the other guys
used British-style punctuation.
So, we came to discuss how to merge our different styles, and I had
some good and well-documented reasons for doing certain things, and
things were going mostly my way, even though my place was in the
minority, numbers-wise. Then, it came to punctuation, and I quoted
Chicago, etc., as reasons for doing things the way I did and the
response from our boss was, "well, since you've had things go your
way, it's only fair to let the others have their way on this."
So, I replied that "I was doing things my way because of US usage
standards, but generally found the British convention that they were
using to be more clear, and I had no problem switching to British
puncutation, especially as I was British."
After which, the decision was made to discard the British usage
because it was British and use US styles--apparently the writers in
question did not know they were using British standards.
LOL!
The short of it being, often, it's not about technical writing,
styles, or standards, but about politics and who has the biggest
stick. <g>
On Apr 7, 2005 9:34 AM, T.W. Smith <techwordsmith -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> For US audiences, put the period and comma inside the closing quote
> unless it would be misleading.
>
> For example, '... then press "Enter."' (quote reversal intentional
> here) would be fine, because even though the Enter key on your
> keyboard does not contain a period/full stop, the meaning is clear.
>
> However, if you are reproducing programming syntax, it might make
> sense to leave the comma, period outside the quotes, for clarity.
>
> Changing fonts is nice and all, but I find changing fonts often does
> not do a good job at highlighting trailing punctuation.
>
> Anyway, for the most part, this means just leave the period and comma
> within the closing quotes for US audiences.
======
T.
Remember, this is online. Take everything with a mine of salt and a grin.
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