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Subject:RE: Punctuation in quotes -- American style From:"Janoff, Steven" <Steven -dot- Janoff -at- ga -dot- com> To:TECHWR-L Writers <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>, Richard Hamilton <dick -at- rlhamilton -dot- net> Date:Mon, 19 Aug 2013 14:38:52 -0700
I have been leaning more and more toward punctuation on the outside in these cases, even the period and the comma:
Set the value of the mode attribute to "titleBelow".
Do not use the mode attribute when type="note".
Yes, it violates American punctuation rules, but this is the new age and it avoids confusion with what's being intended literally. (And I think American commentators talk about these exceptions, and might not be as strict as we think they are.)
We didn't have this problem years ago.
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: On Behalf Of Richard Hamilton
Sent: Monday, August 19, 2013 1:10 PM
To: TECHWR-L Writers
Subject: Re: Punctuation in quotes -- American style
Good points on typeface from Lynne and David.
However, while that may be a good way to go (and I'm leaning towards that solution), it doesn't address what to do if there are quotes in the literal text, as in my second example.
I'm inclined to keep the punctuation outside when the quotes are part of the literal and inside (or use a different typeface) otherwise.
While I agree with David's suggestion of leaving off punctuation in pure instructions, that doesn't always work for me. I do leave punctuation off when I have a stand-alone example, but I also have normal sentences where this comes up and also situations where the quoted text is in the middle of a sentence and a comma is the punctuation in question.
BTW, regarding Gene's note on style guides, this book is being published by my company, so beyond bowing in the general direction of the Chicago Manual of Style, as corporate overlord I do whatever I want:-).
Thanks to everyone for your suggestions.
Richard
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