I often find myself torn when it comes to punctuations and quotation marks. Should the question mark, exclamation mark or period come before or after the closing quotation marks? Therefore, "Would it be correct this way," or "Would it be better off this way"? I've seen it both ways so now I'm confused (and missing my Language Arts teacher). Help me stop doubting myself

Thank you.

Hi,

Well, it depends! In American English, the comma and the period (full stop) is always within the closing quotation marks.

In British English, the comma is usually within the quotation marks in a sentence like this:

" I think so," Nanna replied.

However, in a BE sentence like this the comma is outside the quotation marks. 

I dislike the word 'extremist', and never use it.

While in AME, the comma is within and with double quotation marks.

I dislike the word "extremist," and never use it.

And, of course, there are numerous exceptions.

Nanna

Nanna is mostly right.  In BE it is more usual for the comma to be outside the quotation marks, unless these are enclosing a complete sentence embedded in a larger one, viz.:

'I refrain from using the word "sociopath", which carries an unfriendly connotation.'

'I cannot abide the promiscuous use of the word "sociopath" at all,' said Scott with a grimace.

Re question and exclamation marks (and colon and semicolon): first 2 always inside, second 2 always outside:

"Why don't you come to Ribe sometime?" asked Nanna.

"But I've been there already!" Scott replied.

BE uses double quotation marks more often than AE uses the single marks, but it is incorrect to say that one is BE and the other AE.  It depends on the publisher, and the epoch.

"Hope this helps," said Scott, guileless.

"It does!" Answered Ouadoud, before the arts teacher comes back.

You didn't tell us if there's automatically a capital letter after the exclamation mark.

"What!" her grand mother exclaimed, when Nanna shouted into her ear.

Never a with capital...unless of course you reverse the order and use your name; a proper noun is by definition always with initial capital:

"It does!" Ouadoud exclaimed.

"Aha!" said Virginia. "Now you know," said her friend.

When I was at school in England many years ago we were taught that a comma went outside the inverted commas to separate the speech from the rest of the sentence, but an exclamation or question mark went INSIDE the inverted commas because these denote the inflection of how the words were said.

When I did a TESOL course in the 1990s my tutors complained that this was all wrong and that all punctuation should go inside the inverted commas.

"I find that illogical," Virginia commented, "especially when the inverted commas are at the end of a sentence."

That's why the French, Poles and God knows who else have that the other way around, i.e., ".

Jacek 

« En français », précisa Laurent, « la ponctuation se place de cette façon. »

"Sådan", siger Nanna, "sætter vi anførselstegn på dansk".

It's also okay to use «  -  », or '  -  ' as quotation marks. To make it more fun, we have old comma rules and new comma rules. Both are okay, but some teachers frown on the new comma, which is more akin to the English comma rules.

I was still 50% right. All right, I should have said "Danes, Poles and God knows who else."

Jacek

„En in het Nederlands”, zei Scott, „men doet het dus.”

Nanna vroeg: „Wil je niet naar Ribe?”
Scott zei: „Alleen als je daar echte Jutse droogvis hebt!”

Hmm, as a doubting Thomas I consulted my old Bordas and, sure enough, their « ponctuation se place de cette façon ». Now, I don't know how it is in the numerous French pages I recently quoted because I had to struggle with my scanner and basically adjust all the inverted commas manually, so I will not know for sure what the original convention there was until I retrieve those books.

Jacek
 

Not when quoting a whole sentence. I have just double-checked the usage in the French press.
However, when quoting a single word or expression at the end of a sentence, the period will be left outside the quotes.
That's French « logic ».

Laurent

" En français ", rétorqua Sarah, " le point final est à l'extérieur, à la fin comme son nom l'indique ".

Once again, I'm referring to the current usage in the French press, as applied by the secrétaires de rédaction.

See for example: http://correcteurs.blog.lemonde.fr/correcteurs/la_typo_cest_pas_sorcier/index.html

and look for "L'art d'accommoder les citations (3)":

"Abordons la question de la ponctuation de fin de citation. Si la citation est courte, pas de problème : elle n'est qu'une proposition de la phrase, ou même un complément, et le point final se mettra après les guillemets fermants. [...] le point est après le [guillemet] fermant [...] Par contre, si la citation forme une phrase complète, se suffit à elle-même, la ponctuation finale de la citation sera aussi celle de la phrase. [...] Le point est avant !"
(pardon my French!)

Laurent

It is logical. « I have checked Bordas and they also place entire quoted sentences inside the inverted commas like this. » What's more, I have checked Polish punctuation rules and they are based on the same French logic: a final word is „quoted like this”. „An entire sentence, on the other hand, like this.”

Jacek

Laurent

I think you'll agree that this thread deserves 'bumping'

It was nearly hidden on a New York City Transit public service placard exhorting subway riders not to leave their newspaper behind when they get off the train.

“Please put it in a trash can,” riders are reminded. After which Neil Neches, an erudite writer in the transit agency’s marketing and service information department, inserted a semicolon. The rest of the sentence reads, “that’s good news for everyone.” …

In terms of punctuation, semicolons signal something New Yorkers rarely do. Frank McCourt, the writer and former English teacher at Stuyvesant High School, describes the semicolon as the yellow traffic light of a “New York sentence.” In response, most New Yorkers accelerate; they don’t pause to contemplate.

But, whatever one’s personal feelings about semicolons, some people don’t use them because they never learned how.

In fact, when Mr. Neches was informed by a supervisor that a reporter was inquiring about who was responsible for the semicolon, he was concerned.

“I thought at first somebody was complaining,” he said. …

People have lost fortunes and even been put to death because of imprecise punctuation involving semicolons in legal papers. In 2004, a court in San Francisco rejected a conservative group’s challenge to a statute allowing gay marriage because the operative phrases were separated incorrectly by a semicolon instead of by the proper conjunction.

Louis Menand, an English professor at Harvard and a staff writer at The New Yorker, pronounced the subway poster’s use of the semicolon to be “impeccable.”

Lynne Truss, author of “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation,” called it a “lovely example” of proper punctuation.

Geoffrey Nunberg, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, praised the “burgeoning of punctuational literacy in unlikely places.”

Allan M. Siegal, a longtime arbiter of New York Times style before retiring, opined, “The semicolon is correct, though I’d have used a colon, which I think would be a bit more sophisticated in that sentence.”

The linguist Noam Chomsky sniffed, “I suppose Bush would claim it’s the effect of No Child Left Behind.”

New York City Transit’s unintended agenda notwithstanding, e-mail messages and text-messaging may jeopardize the last vestiges of semicolons. They still live on, though, in emoticons, those graphic emblems of our grins, grimaces and other facial expressions.

The semicolon, befittingly, symbolizes a wink.

A missing semicolon, and goodbye clientele...

http://signsoflife.goose24.org/?sign=234

Thank you, Elena, for yet another sign of life. I was unaware that the semicolon could arouse such strong feelings in people:  

"If I were linguistic emperor," says Michael Tomasky, who recently took over as editor of the unabashedly liberal The American Prospect, "not only would semicolons be mandatory, but we'd all be writing like [18th-century Scottish historian Thomas] Carlyle: massive 130-word sentences that were mad concatenations of em dashes, colons, semicolons, parentheticals, asides; reading one of those Carlyle sentences can sweep me along in its mighty wake and make me feel as if I'm on some sort of drug. What writing today does that? Some, maybe even a lot, in the realm of literature; but not much in non-fiction, alas."

How to avoid linguistic emperors and pompous sillies:

The semicolon and other tricky punctuations explained with easy to understand examples. Please see:

http://www.class.uidaho.edu/adv_tech_wrt/resources/sentence_style/semicolons.htm

Originally written by Nanna Mercer on February 21, 2008 5:53 PM   People have lost fortunes and even been put to death because of imprecise punctuation involving semicolons in legal papers.

See also Post #135200 on the comma war.

* * *

In her description of the translation process, Lucja Biel (http://accurapid.com/journal/44freelancer.htm) points out that as part of the quality assurance the translator should

from her translation.

Right. However, there are still organizations, believe it or not, that use double spacing after a period (full stop to Brits). Originally, those who learned typing on typewriters, at least in the United States, were taught to use two spaces after a sentence-ending period for a better readability, to help people distinguish between sentence-ending periods and abbreviation-ending periods, etc. With word processors these considerations are gone, however see a discussion of this at http://www.painintheenglish.com/post.php?id=68:

Also: "Because it is increasingly common for papers and manuscripts to be prepared with a single space after all punctuation marks, this spacing is shown in the examples in the MLA Handbook and the MLA Style Manual. As a practical matter, however, there is nothing wrong with using two spaces after concluding punctuation marks unless an instructor or editor requests that you do otherwise." http://www.mla.org/style/style_faq/style_faq3 (via http://archivist.incutio.com/viewlist/css-discuss/80607)

Otherwise, like Lucja, I only find recommendations on the Web for the use of a single space after all punctuation marks, e.g.: "Double spaces date back to the days of typewriters, when all characters were allotted the same amount of space. Computerized typesetting adjusts the spacing for a good fit. Extra spaces create gaps and look unprofessional." http://www.utexas.edu/visualguidelines/punctuation.html

Jacek

Back to

Has modern life killed the semicolon?

http://www.slate.com/id/2194087/

Yes, and what do you do when the source has double spacing?

I usually remove the double spacing, but I always have an uneasy feeling that I am in the wrong.

Nanna 

Originally written by Jacek Krankowski on April 3, 2008 3:19 PM http://www.painintheenglish.com/post.php?id=68: For all of you haters of the double-space after a full-stop, I hate to tell you that I am writing a style guide for my organization that will include it as a rule. We create very formal documents. To ensure the documents are as intelligible as possible, we will use two spaces. I do not care what font you use. Laziness is acceptable in today's culture many places, but I will not allow it in the documents I edit. We also use 1-inch margins instead of the MS Word default of 1.25 inches because we need to fit as much information into as little space as possible while not neglecting our need to be as succinct as possible.

Interesting that someone who is obviously very much against ‘laziness’ would nonetheless write a style guide that codifies what is originally itself a sign of laziness: the double-space.

Were he interested in maintaining optimal intelligibility and readability in his organisation’s “very formal documents”, he should codify the usage of the character the double-space is a lazy typewriter workaround for: the em space.

Then again, he does seem to refer to Microsoft Word as a guiding line or standard for page layout, so I’d say his blather can be dismissed fairly easily.

Link inserted by the moderator

Thanks Nanna for inserting that link. I saw it at the same time.

It points to a statement by a (Scott | Aug-7-07 1:28PM) in the discussion at http://www.painintheenglish.com/post.php?id=68:

Originally written by Jacek Krankowski on April 3, 2008 3:19 PM http://www.painintheenglish.com/post.php?id=68: For all of you haters of the double-space after a full-stop, I hate to tell you that I am writing a style guide for my organization that will include it as a rule. We create very formal documents. To ensure the documents are as intelligible as possible, we will use two spaces. I do not care what font you use. Laziness is acceptable in today's culture many places, but I will not allow it in the documents I edit. We also use 1-inch margins instead of the MS Word default of 1.25 inches because we need to fit as much information into as little space as possible while not neglecting our need to be as succinct as possible.

It is certainly important for people who use the quote feature here on TC to check the post they are quoting and make sure that internal citations and references are not deleted.

Jeff

My apologies. In my eager to make the quoted message shorter, I must accidentally have chopped off a line too many—and then my post appeared at the top of a new page, further breaking whatever continuity there was!

Originally written by Janus Jacquet  the double-space is a lazy typewriter workaround for: the em space.

Even assuming that the double-space developed as a substitute for the em space (source?), I don't see why such a development is necessarily a "lazy" one.  Instead, it could be seen as a matter of efficiency.  Was the development of moveable type a lazy workaround for copying books by hand?

Regardless of its historical origins, I think the double space serves a valuable function, as it helps to clearly demarcate sentences, which theoretically are self-contained, if inter-related, ideas.

It was funny, Jeff, for I read the words supposedly attributed to Jacek and thought, "Hmn...does he really think that?" and I hurried to check.

And as for you, Janus...you will be hung or hanged (whichever) at dawn.

Nanna

Pardon my ignorance, but what, pray tell, is an m-space?  I have always used two spaces after a period or question mark.  When did that change, and why?  How can it be lazy to hit the space bar twice instead of once, since it's twice as much work?

Confused,;:?

Maxi

Don't ask me, Maxi. I am just the hapless moderator.

Nanna, who is equally clueless

Originally written by Laurent Chiacchierini on July 19, 2008 4:13 PM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_character (Confer "em dash")

Hair space. Interrobang. Nut and Mutton. Fascinating. I didn't know!

Thanks, Laurent.

Nanna

Thanks, Nanna, found it here:

"In computer character encodings, there is a normal general-purpose space (Unicode character U+0020; 32 decimal) whose width will vary according to the design of the typeface. Typical values range from 1/5-em to 1/3-em (in digital typography an em is equal to the nominal size of the font, so for a 10-point font the space will probably be between 2 and 3.3 points). S"

Really - somebody expects that a) a translator should begin encoding his texts so that spaces are between 2 a 3.3 points for a 10-pont font, and b) any client would care about such spacing?

The idea seems a bit odd to me.  My clients care that the format is the same, and above all the the translations are correct and read well.  That is where I will continue putting my attention.

Maxi

My reply was a bit facetious, because this ‘Scott’ character came off as a bit of a pompous arse. It seemed he was claiming that the double-space was the be-all and end-all to legibility and intelligibility (how I love that word).

And yet, he didn’t seem to realise that the double-space is purely a typewriter thing. If they are properly setting and printing formal documents, they shouldn’t be using typewriter workarounds, but the proper typographical units—they’re there for a reason!

Personally, I’m just fine with single-spaces after sentence-delimiters; but if he wants to be ‘traditionalist’ and preserve the old extra spacing between sentences, he should do so using the proper tools that are now, in the age of computer typesetting, so readily available. Using an app like InDesign or Quark (I’m assuming about Quark here, since I don’t use it myself), setting a simple keyboard shortcut for an em space is a simple task.

David, if you’ll accept Wikipedia as a reliable source, its article on French spacing provides at least somewhat of one for the evolution of intersentential spacing.

The double-space is only a ‘lazy’ workaround inasmuch as the typewriter makers were ‘lazy’ (or perhaps rather economical) in the layout of their keyboards, not including an option for an em space. And to be annoying in the same way that ‘Scott’ was annoying by calling the single-space style lazy.

Edit: Bugger. I seem to be habitually antisocial in this thread. My posts simply refuse to be on the same page as the posts I’m replying to.

Double-edit: Oh, and Nanna: if I have the choice, I think I’ll settle for being hung at dawn, rather than hanged.

To all posters who pay no attention to lower/upper case and punctuation when posting. You never know when spelling and typing mistakes will betray you in real life too: http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/world/2008/08/13/D92HIG1O0_iran_interior_minister/index.htm

....in the certificate, "entitled" is misspelled "intitled," and it says Kordan was granted the degree "to be benefitted from its scientific privileges."

The clumsily worded document says Kordan "has shown a great effort in preparing educational materials and his research in the domain of comparative law,that has opened a new chapter,not only in our university,but, to our knowledge,in this country" -- leaving out spaces after all but one of the commas. ...

Wellatleastheleftafewspacessincewithoutspacesseparatingindividualwordsitis ...

Nanna

Operation Gold Seal in the United States uncovered one fake degree mill that sold diplomas and degrees to more than 9000 buyers with total sales exceeeding US$7 million.

Analysis of buyers by country and the names of the insitutions that appear on the fake certs: http://www.hep.uiuc.edu/home/g-gollin/pigeons/SRUCourt/Govt_Exhib_A.doc

List of buyers in alphabetical order: http://www.spokesmanreview.com/data/diploma-mill/
The winner: USA.

“The data show a sharp rise in sales in March 2003, when revenues soared past $50,000
per month for the first time.”

Pause and effect

The quiet generosity of the semicolon

The quote, from a speech Emerson gave at the centennial observance of the Concord fight in 1875, had been printed with a semicolon in the local paper and in the town's official record of the proceedings: "The thunderbolt falls on an inch of ground; but the light of it fills the horizon." But Davis - not wanting to see an error carved in stone - asked if a comma would be better.

I liked the formality of the semicolon, and the way it echoed biblical lines like the ones from Ecclesiastes (as punctuated in the Authorized Version): "All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full." Or "Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity."

This sense was reinforced when I read more of Emerson's speech, where other semicolons kept this one company: "The British instantly retreated," his paragraph continued. "We had no electric telegraph; but the news of this triumph of the farmers over the King's troops flew through the country, to New York, to Philadelphia, to Kentucky, to the Carolinas, with speed unknown before, and ripened the colonies to inevitable decision."

Emerson's semicolon isn't required, and later versions of the line often use a comma. The Chautauquan, in fact, revised Emerson's lines even more thoroughly and bombastically in 1897: "The thunderbolt falls on an inch of ground but the light of it fills the horizon. The British instantly retreated!"

But I voted for the semicolon, and that's what the marker has. So my recommendation for a National Punctuation Day outing - for semicolon fans within range - is a visit to the Old North Bridge, to honor both Emerson's semicolon and your freedom to use it where less daring punctuators might make do with a modest comma.

And what does a comma do, a comma does nothing but make easy a thing that if you like it enough is easy enough without the comma. A long complicated sentence should force itself upon you, make you know yourself knowing it and the comma, well at the most a comma is a poor period that lets you stop and take a breath but if you want to take a breath you ought to know yourself that you want to take a breath. It is not like stopping altogether has something to do with going on, but taking a breath well you are always taking a breath and why emphasize one breath rather than another breath. Anyway that is the way I felt about it and I felt that about it very very strongly. And so I almost never used a comma. The longer, the more complicated the sentence the greater the number of the same kinds of words I had following one after another, the more the very more I had of them the more I felt the passionate need of their taking care of themselves by themselves and not helping them, and thereby enfeebling them by putting in a comma.
So that is the way I felt about punctuation in prose, in poetry it is a little different but more so …

— Gertrude Stein
from Lectures in America 

Originally written by Liliana Boladz-Nekipelov on December 13, 2008 7:18 PM I almost never used a comma. ... So that is the way I felt about punctuation in prose.… — Gertrude Stein

Not in legal prose...

See Post #135200 on the comma war.

Mark my words, and his, and hers

Lionel Shriver, author of "The Post-Birthday World" and other novels, has an essay in today's Wall Street Journal about the missing quotation marks in modern fiction. Someone must have issued a memo, she writes, saying "Cool writers don't use quotes in dialogue anymore." [...]

http://www.utne.com/GreatWriting/Down-with-the-Em-Dash-Long-Live-the-Semicolon-Gordon.aspx?utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email

Writers overuse the em-dash—that all too convenient of punctuation marks. By employing the em-dash too often—whether out of laziness or a lack of creativity—they neglect the simple pleasures of the semicolon. Lionel Shriver writes for Standpoint:

These days, the semicolon exudes an aura of the fusty, the fastidious, and the defunct; of mildewed stacks, tight hair buns, and prissily sharpened pencils; of hesitancy, diffidence, and uncertainty, in contrast to the em-dash, which exudes a spirit of strength, flair, and decisiveness.

Punctuation Mark News: Meet the Interrobang!

In 1962, Manhattan ad man Martin Speckter wanted a punctuation mark that would “express that hard-to-capture middle state between excitement and inquiry: incredulity.” He merged the question mark and exclamation point into one symbol, dubbing it the “interrobang,” a portmanteau of “interrogate” and “bang” (printers’ jargon for an exclamation point). The symbol never caught on, as most typewriter companies were hesitant to add a new key.

But technology has evolved, and the interrobang could finally have its day as the punctuation mark for the twenty-first century.

Friedman champions the interrobang, noting its “capacity to pique interest and reinforce the effect of frenzied sentences” such as "She said what!?" or the ubiquitous "WTF!?" http://www.utne.com/GreatWriting/Punctuation-Mark-News-Meet-the-Interrobang.aspx?utm_medium=email&utm_source=iPost