This is my own rule, it comes from no external grammar; but it has served me well.
If the punctuation be intrinsic to the phrase being quoted, put it inside the quotes. Otherwise generally put it outside though there are some situations where it will look better inside and your gut should be gone with.
I'm with Ezra on this. Screw the rules.
A period or comma always goes inside the quotes.
A question mark or exclamation mark only goes inside the quotes if it was part of the quote originally.
I'm pretty sure that's it.
If it's not in the original, don't put it in the quotes. Who tells you otherwise is a scoundrel of a knave of a charlatan of a blackguard.
That's a perfectly good rule, SB, if you're using quotation marks to mark a quotation, but in other uses, such as "scare quotes," does the comma go inside the quotation marks, or not?
"The first official meeting of the reanimated Unfogged reading group is this Tuesday, and we're discussing Montaigne's 'Of Drunkenness'."
Now, if you were discussing Re-Animator, I might join in.
"Can someone explain it?"
It depends first on whether you're writing by British commonwealth rules or American rules.
Then there are debates over whether online style should differ.
Simply put, in American rules, all other punctuation always goes inside quotes, with a couple of arcane exceptions you can find in, say, Words Into Type, or the Chicago Manual Of Style, which are the two most authoritative styleguides in trade book publishing, though news reporting uses other style guides, such as AP, or house style.
There are some problems at times with doing this online in, say, quoting URLs and not wanting to mislead people into using characters that physically won't work. Blockquoting gets around this.
Because of this, there's something of a push to switch towards British rules online even in America. Wired has its own style guide, for instance.
I tend to stick to traditional American, save when I'm being lazy, and just cut and paste and stick quotation marks around it.
To be correct, for one thing, online, when quoting something with quotation marks, and doing so correctly, but wishing to use quotation marks, you need to switch all the original full quotation marks to single quotes.
I'm probably the only person who bothers to do this a lot, though even I get lazy at times, as I've said.
There are plenty of older commentaries on usage you can find online, such as old Fowlers, and Strunk & White, by the way, though these aren't style guides, but I thought I'd mention.
"That's a perfectly good rule, SB, if you're using quotation marks to mark a quotation, but in other uses, such as 'scare quotes,' does the comma go inside the quotation marks, or not?"
Yes.
but in other uses, such as "scare quotes," does the comma go inside the quotation marks, or not?
It all depends on just how scary the comma in question is.
That is, yes, inside the quotation marks.
No, Gary, you're wrong. I should say, you're correct as to the facts, but your normative position is a scandal. I'm afraid we've no choice but to shoot you out of a cannon.
I agree with Standpipe.
Oh and Standpipe, I meant to ask earlier, is
[ ] Hey hey HEY!
said in a Fat Albert voice?
'Cause that would be cool.
4 gets it exactly right, for reasons I have adduced here and elsewhere.
Damn but there's some serious comity going down right about now.
British rules agree with 4. If you're a red-blooded Merkin, you will usually put all your added commas and periods inside the quotation marks and all your added semicolons, question marks, and exclamation points outside the quotation marks. Of course, anything that's in the original gets inside the quotation marks.
At least that's what I teach my college students, according to most college style-guide norms.
AWB is right and those who make up their own rules (I name no names) are, technically, completely and utterly and totally wrong.
On the other hand, I'm perfectly willing to say fuck the rules.
10: "I'm afraid we've no choice but to shoot you out of a cannon."
Better than out of a canon. Do I get a helmet? And to land in a mountain of whipped cream?
"Hey hey HEY!" is said in a M/tch M/lls voice.
Good job, A White Bear
You're hugging this in-joke so tight it has nipple dents.
Do I get a helmet? And to land in a mountain of whipped cream?
Thin ice, man, thin ice.
"Thin ice, man, thin ice."
It would get Ogged back here, he pointed out.
Besides, I never wear a helmet during the thing of which I No Longer Speak. I live dangerously.
w-lfs-n's actual view on punctuation and quotes commits him to various crimes against humanity and to getting his ass kicked by Catherine.
w-lfs-n's actual view on punctuation and quotes commits him to various crimes against humanity and to getting his ass kicked by Catherine.
But she loves me! Besides, as I've demonstrated, the "standard view" has its own problems.
I think I'm in love with Gary Farber, and I don't even know who he is. Yes, I know, it's a little sick to be in love with someone merely because he actually knows what he's doing, punctuation-wise, but there you have it.
Yes, I know, it's a little sick to be in love with someone merely because he actually knows what he's doing, punctuation-wise, but there you have it.
You must be pretty free with your love.
I knew that if I just wrote stuff online for 11 years, tens of thousands of comments after comments, with 7, 556 posts, someday a woman would find me and love me for what I write, not who I am.
Thanks, AWB. I always thought that the American rule was to include all punctuation inside the quotation marks--even exclamation and question marks, though always found this strange. I've also always been confused about why one should insert lots of commas where there would be no punctuation but for the existence of a quotation.
My favoite part about the British rules is that a regular quotation is signalled by a single inverted comma (') and a quotation within a quotation is marked wih double quotes ("). This makea so much more sense than our backwards version.
Thus:
Then Scrooge said, "It was a very cold day, and Cratchett said, 'I'd like to put some more coal on the fire.'". The other way around with an extra mark for an inverted quotation makes a lot of sense to me.
26: Yer just jealous because she loves him without wanting to kick his ass.
26: Yer just jealous because she loves him without wanting to kick his ass.
A love that doesn't incorporate the desire to kick ass is an inferior sort of love.
Have no fear; anyone who actually gets to know me and loves me wants to kick my ass part of the time. The trick is to keep the yin and yang in balance.
Hell, I want to kick my ass part of the time.
28: "I've also always been confused about why one should insert lots of commas where there would be no punctuation but for the existence of a quotation."
Hmm?
If there are two rules, there's no rule. Everything is permitted, and no one is ever right.
"If there are two rules, there's no rule."
But any managing editor will only give one rule, or more clearly, have one house style guide.
A period or comma always goes inside the quotes.
If you're a red-blooded Merkin, you will usually put all your added commas and periods inside the quotation
But see item #4.
"But see item #4."
Unless you do this for a living and don't want to be fired.
Some of us have actually spent a career on these points, although I realize that's a completely boring element to note.
Item 4 of that list follows the MLA rules, an association whose members write articles for a living and don't want them to be rejected. Some of them have actually spent a career on these points, although I realize that's a completely boring element to note.
You people are ignoring the obvious fact that quotation marks are themselves punctuation! Should they go inside or outside of the quotation marks?
Just want to point out, in a huff, that 14 is right, and it's basically what I said in 3, and that my wife (who writes and edits for a living) agrees with me.
That is all.
37: See, that was my problem with footnote rules. I never studied modern languages in any serious way, and my department provided no guidance. There were two major American periodicals, and each had its own rules.
Classics is a more international than most fields. So, a lot of professors submit articles to British and German periodicals which makes everything more confusing.
"Item 4 of that list follows the MLA rules,"
Actually, I read you as referring to #4 above, and didn't notice you were linking; apologies.
And there's nothing wrong with 4 above as a ha-ha, and there's no reason anyone can't follow what rules they like, when they're writing to please themselves, of course. I mistook the reference to 4 above (as I thought it was) as, however, a serious repeat of an absolute commandment that if followed in serious circumstances could cause the writer problems.
Hope we have that cleared up now.
"...an absolute commandment...."
And to attempt to be crystal clear, I took it as an absolute and sweeping commandment for all circumstances of writing and publishing.
As a secondary point, relatively few people write according to MLA rules, as opposed to trade publication or popular publication, although that may be of secondary, or almost entirely irrelevant, interest in the context of the general crowd here.
But most people who write are not, in fact, academics, let alone in English Departments.
I guess what still confuses me is whether the length of the quotation has anything to do with it. It seems that AWB and GF are saying no. I have no problem putting my periods and commas inside quotation marks if the quotation is long, but I feel like it starts to look stupid the shorter the quotation gets. If I have one word in scare quotes, I instinctively rebel against putting my comma or period inside them. Similarly, above, a two-word essay title didn't seem to merit having a period inside the quotation marks. Is it wrong to be inconsistent?
According to the academic stylee rules that I use most often, length of the quotation doesn't matter. But:
If I have one word in scare quotes, I instinctively rebel against putting my comma or period inside them.
In American philosophy style, usually when you have one or two words that you're using to denote a concept instead of quoting from somewhere else, you put them in single quotes and put punctuation outside them. As in:
The definition of 'justification', be it internalist or externalist, will not rely on the concept that Wyman calls "totally stupid."
Sorry Gary, didn't realize you were talking about comment 4.
That part of MLA style is funny because I had it drilled into me by more than one high school English teacher and it was only later that I realized it was an aspect of just one style.
# 3 & 14 above are correct for the American rules. Strunk makes this quite clear, if you have a copy handy. Periods & commas inside, everything else out.
The thing to remember about the rule is that it MAKES NO SENSE. So long as you try to impose sense on it, you will err. Embrace the arbitrariness, and you will be correct.
Don't give me that Zen hocus-pocus, not in support of such a bankrupt convention.
Standpipe, the principal reason to give a shit about the "rule" is to avoid offending those who take the rules seriously, at least until they've all died out.
Obviously, then, it helps to know the rule. Flout it all you like, but know what it is first.
So, a question for those who would know. What is the propriety of using scare quotes around a colloquial verb or noun phrase in the midst of writing of a more formal style, to signify that the phrase is acknowledged as stylistically anomalous, or, perhaps, "shit [that] came out of nowhere"?
at least until they've all died out.
We should work on that.
I learned on my very first day of philosophy seminar that putting things in quotes meant something different in philosophy. "Plato was a philosopher. 'Plato' has five letters."
And thus I terrorize my students with it in the same way. There are no air-quotes in philosophy! "You" know what 'I' mean.
Otherwise Gary's #6 gets it exactly right.
52: My totally incorrect opinion is that if you're using scare-quotes, you should be using a different word that better expresses what you mean.
What is the propriety of using scare quotes around a colloquial verb or noun phrase in the midst of writing of a more formal style, to signify that the phrase is acknowledged as stylistically anomalous, or, perhaps, "shit [that] came out of nowhere"?
This is how the author of Making It Explicit writes his carefully defined version of
That's (discounting "Or at least" onward) from footnote 4, on page 209, of Articulating Reasons. I think it's really weird that he says "the author of Making It Explicit" instead of "I". Also that he doesn't mention that he gives a brief description of scare quotes on pp 179–80 of AR.
55 is right, at least in the case pdf describes; but quotation in general, I surmise, means something like "This is said." Both scare-quotes and direct quotation derive from this ur-use. Therefore there is nothing wrong with scare-quotes as such, to mean that others might say something but you would not say this in propria persona, except insofar as this is often a lint-puppety thing to do. cf. Henninger on "wogs" (N.B. no actual scare quotes used there).
And I am most thankful that no one ever gets on my jock about the use-mention distinction anymore.
"Hey hey HEY!" is said in a M/tch M/lls voice.
That's Rick James, bitch!
You're hugging this in-joke so tight it has nipple dents.
Maybe, but I have only hugged it twice.
Do you want a "good job, Standpipe" too? Is that it?
So follow the house rules, if you know what they are, and freelance otherwise. Anyone who complains is an asshole.
Alternatively, write "Please copyedit to taste" at the top of everything you write.
What a shame 'Kaye' Grogan never studied "philosophy."
I'm going to start writing that on my comments.
57: It got much easier to read Making It Explicit once I realized that he was refusing to use the first person even when he really should have.
Please copy edit to taste.
"63 to 61"
s/b
"Please copyedit to taste.
63 to 61."
65 - Should one have to explain their inferences about a book entitled Making It Explicit?
Has please copyedit to taste words.
Philosophy-style, which I adopt for the purpose of this comment, the first 'wrap' here would go in single quotes and the period would go outside it, since the word is being referred to. But the rest of the punctuation would stay the same, since those are presumably quotations from someone else.
Philosophy-style, which I adopt for the purpose of this comment, the first 'wrap' here would go in single quotes and the period would go outside it, since the word is being referred to.
No Matt I'm telling you, wraps are an abomination, I don't see why you're defending them.
It seems to me that quotes, as they're usually incorrectly used, are conceptualized as matching a certain intonation, and whenever that intonation is used when speaking, quotes are used when writing. I think this explains both scare quotes and the (abominable) use of quotes as a plain intensifier, where bold or underlining should instead be used (and are often used in conjunction). For example,
"DON'T" WALK ON WET FLOOR.
Yes, I've actually seen this.
55: What if the word you're using is some vernacular that's important to the point of what you're writing, and so using it is unavoidable? Should you use the word without scare quotes, even if it makes a mess of the consistency of the formality?
Yeah, that's quite common. "Fresh" eggs, etc.
In an influential article in the final issue of the Journal of Applied Pedantry, Professor Colloquialism "laid" what he called "the smackdown" on earlier writers who complained about what they had called "excessive informality" on his part.
71 - Worse than that is the sign in our restroom at work:
LADIES! """""""PLEASE""""""" WASH SINK AFTER USING!!!
Apparently one misuse of quotes wasn't enough.
And I'll save most of my comments for tomorrow, but I must say that I was very disappointed to start this essay and realize the author was anti-drunkenness and not Woo! Drunkenness!
74: Your made-up example is unnecessarily bad, even for using scare quotes. Though it is amusing.
What's the essay that ends, "but then, they do not wear pants", or words to that effect?
Misuse of quotation marks sounds like the least of their problems...
75 -- what does "wash sink after using" mean? Are people using the sinks as urinals because the line for toilets is too long, and the sign is asking them to wash it out after they do their business? Most common uses of a restroom sink that I can visualize (maybe I don't spend enough time in ladies rooms) themselves consist of "washing" and it's hard for me to see what purpose a subsequent washing would serve.
"Is it wrong to be inconsistent?"
Insofar as there are any rules at all to punctuation, or copyediting, the very worst thing of all is to be inconsistent.
One can get away with any number of different house styles in different circumstances, but only if one is consistent.
That's for nonfiction; naturally, in fiction, writing in different voices may call for different styles, and there are circumstances in which different styles of punctuation might be allowed for different voices, but, still, internal consistency must be maintained, or there must be a valid and important reason why not.
But if you're writing fiction, you'd better be dealing with a skilled fiction copyeditor, anyway, no matter how good a writer you are. (Note: there are plenty of bad fiction copyeditors, of course.) And, of course, if you're not a good writer with a firm grasp of your tools, please don't write fiction! Save the forests! (Yeah, okay, people have to learn. Sigh.)
"That part of MLA style is funny because I had it drilled into me by more than one high school English teacher and it was only later that I realized it was an aspect of just one style."
Most high school English teaching of grammar ruin people for life. For one thing, the teachers tend to act as if there are Authorities in English who Make The Rules, and the Authorities Must Not Be Questioned, rather than explaining why certain styles are the best or most appropriate choices in certain circumstances.
Then there's the whole tradition of pretending that English is Latin, and that you mustn't split an infinitive, or other ludicrous crap like that. Up with which you must not put.
On the other hand, have to know the rules to know how to break them well. Such as eliding the pronoun, there. But I descend perilously close to cliche.
49: "The thing to remember about the rule is that it MAKES NO SENSE. So long as you try to impose sense on it, you will err."
Similar to the way the possessive "its" has no apostrophe, which more people screw up than any other point, probably. Of course, it does make sense in that it avoids confusion with "it is" contracting to "it's," but it's not consistent with the possessive apostrophe used with most other words in English (unless they end in "s"; on a Tuesday; while playing Fizzbin).
61: "Alternatively, write 'Please copyedit to taste' at the top of everything you write."
And try not to write "stet" next to everything questionable unless you really really really really know what you're doing.
71: "Yes, I've actually seen this."
Quotation marks are also constantly misused by subliterates. Which is to say: most people. Particularly sign-makers, and writers of menus.
But don't get me started on bad writing. The upside of not having been doing copyediting or line editing for some years (and I don't even have any of my beloved references any more, alas, alack; I used to have most of a wall of dictionaries, style books, and reference books on usage; sniffle) is that I don't have to deal with the pain of going through subliterate manuscripts and moan.
On the other hand, I read blogs and blog comments, which really does explain a lot of my frequent testiness.
No, really.
I mean, it's not as if folks see me correcting people that much. (And I did just point out to someone only an hour ago that "perjorative" is not a word.)
(Though, to be sure, this group being so highly edickated, it's relatively painless here; but there are many other blogs I read I can't say that of; but, then, that's also part of why I tend to comment regularly at only a handful of blogs, none of them the Big Huge Popular ones; even a place like The Washington Monthly is a cesspool of pain -- though also as regards the poorly expressed, and bad, ideas, to be sure. But, oops, my own version of intellectual snobbery is showing.) (And for god's sake, I'd proof-read all of Matt Yglesias's stuff for free, if he'd only let me, just to save me having to see it the way it is when he posts it.)
81 - We have a very large number of people who brush their teeth after lunch at work (and sometimes again in the afternoon). I'm all for dental hygiene but that seems a little excessive. I think it's asking people to clean up leftover toothpaste and dry the sink area if they splashed around.
How do you wash the sink without using it?
Toothpaste does tend to accrue in a sort of soap-scum-like manner, even for otherwise clean people. But I suppose Becks' office's sign isn't referring to that.
84: Ah, but the sign doesn't say "each use".
"What if the word you're using is some vernacular that's important to the point of what you're writing, and so using it is unavoidable? Should you use the word without scare quotes, even if it makes a mess of the consistency of the formality?"
It might be helpful to mention what sort of writing you're asking about, and what the context is, but in most circumstances I can think of (keep in mind that I know little about academic styles, as opposed to trade publishing styles), I would think not, unless you're in a position to dictate changes in typeface, or style calls for making such usage clear with italics or other such typographic mode.
But, then, "scare quotes" isn't a term you're going to find in any style guides I'm familiar with, so it's not a concept I fully grok in formal terms. Quotes is quotes, or more properly, we quote things and put them in quotation marks. I'm not sure, as I just said, what "scare quotes" quite denotes, or what might be special about their usage, frankly.
In my experience -- and there are certainly many far better copyeditors of both fiction and nonfiction than I am, not to mention my being very out of practice, and lacking all my reference books -- stuff either belongs in quotes, or doesn't; if I'm copy-editing, and don't see a reason to clearly leave something or clearly strike it, I'll, of course, query it, but I've never run into a rule/guideline about "scare quotes" anywhere.
84: Ah, but the sign doesn't say "each use".
Great, so the time I washed it after using it last year counts, I guess.
"Misuse of quotation marks sounds like the least of their problems..."
See, now, you needed to put a period on the end of that ellipses, because you were ending your sentence.
:-)
Whoops, I typoed "ellipsis" for its plural, "ellipses." Bad Gary! (It's hardly as if I'm not fairly careless in writing blog comments, in point of fact.)
89: But that wasn't an ellipsis. That was three stops. An ellipsis is like this: …
See, now, you needed to put a period on the end of that ellipses, because you were ending your sentence.
This ain't the legal world.
Oddly, they're visually identical in this typeface. (At least on my Linux machine, which doesn't have Windows fonts.) Usually, the real ellipses is spaced slightly wider.
Sign on cake at Becks' office's last party:
EMPLOYEES! """""""PLEASE""""""" HAVE CAKE AFTER EATING!!!
Ack! e s/b i. I got it right the first time.
Indeed. An actual ellipses is like this: . . .
So, Gary, do mistakes that are apparently typos annoy you as much as mistakes that apparently stem from a poor grasp of grammar?
Indeed. An actual ellipses is like this: . . .
An actual ellipsis is whatever gets generated by this: … in HTML, or ldots in LaTeX.
96: This may not work, but it should actually look more like this: . . .
I guess support for the   entity isn't that widespread.
What's wrong with fucking "…", people?
Even fucking …? You know, at …'s age and all?
True, there's little point in fucking anyone under 30.
True, there's little point in fucking anyone under 30.
You waited that long?
I didn't, which is why I know what I'm talking about.
Like Philip Roth, I am self-sacrificingly willing to fuck women under 30, thus saving them (at my cost) from the problem B alludes to.
Even though it's marginally relevant, I'll repeat my favorite Roth line (the words of a student he had a fling with):
"Professor X, I can't save you. I'm only twenty years old".
(My Life as a Man, paraphrased quote.)
there's little point in fucking anyone under 30.
Charity?
Also, in regards to misuse of quotation marks, there's a bar in D.C. (Millie & Al's), the menu of which notes that they have " "The best pizza in the city" " (or something to that effect), without attribution of any kind. Meaning there are quotes around that sentence as it's printed on the menu. I like to speculate about the source; perhaps it was some homeless person they gave a free slice of pizza to, and they're quoting his expression of gratitude.
"So, Gary, do mistakes that are apparently typos annoy you as much as mistakes that apparently stem from a poor grasp of grammar?"
Nope. We all make typos. And I don't blame people who have a poor grasp of grammar for said condition; there's no reason everyone should have a splendid grasp of grammar, and almost all of us have some flaws in our usage, and most of us aren't fanatic about being elegant in our writing all the time; god knows I almost never am elegant, or other than quick and dirty; I often use solecisms or fall into downright error, as well as frequently be sloppy and careless in what I write.
It's generally only when people write so badly that one can't figure out what the hell they're trying to say that I get much bothered by bad blog-writing.
Of course, when they're trying to tell you how wrong you are, it can be downright amusing. Such as, say, in the comment thread here.
Are we meeting on the Being and Time page? Did I miss a time when the discussion will start? Will Latin-readers translate?
AWB -- I believe LizardBreath is putting up post sometime today where we can discuss the essay. The time for the post to go up, if I recall correctly, is "when she's good and ready." Or we could start discussing it here, now, if you prefer. Did you dig the essay? I'm afraid I didn't get a lot out of it -- Montaigne did not seem to me to be actually getting at anything of substance, not spending more than a paragraph on any idea, so no idea really got fleshed out and developed before he jumped willy-nilly to the next. There were a couple of funny lines but I am not remembering now what they were.
I don't think LB is around today. I'm not sure whether we should go ahead without her discussion questions or wait for her, and maybe have the reading group meeting tomorrow.
I have to go to work for a little while, but if you start on Unfogged somewhere or on the Being and Time page, I'll find you and catch up.
I vote for meeting on the main page instead of Being and Time, for ease of site maintenance.
Hell, I forgot I was doing this (or rather, I forgot when it was.) I'll get something together shortly.
An online version which seems to include translations of the latin and greek quotes is here.