Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!harpsichord.cis.ohio-state.edu!lwh From: lwh@harpsichord.cis.ohio-state.edu (Loyde W Hales) Newsgroups: comp.text Subject: Re: em-dashes, ellipsis and English Usage (long) Message-ID: <56957@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: 7 Aug 89 05:53:09 GMT References: <65590@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <65736@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <28@nx32s.anduk.co.uk> <1188@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu> <30@nx32s.anduk.co.uk> <1128@sas.UUCP> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: Loyde W Hales Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science Lines: 33 In article <1128@sas.UUCP> bts@sas.UUCP (Brian T. Schellenberger) writes: >In article <30@nx32s.anduk.co.uk> lee%anduk.UUCP@neat.ai.toronto.edu (Liam R. Quin) writes: >|| A quoted word or phrase less than a grammatically complete sentence >|| should not be followed by any punctuation (except a question mark, >|| exclamation mark or ellipsis) before the closing quotation mark, but the >|| punctuation of the main sentence, if any, should be placed outside the >|| quotation marks: >|| These writers are sometimes known as `the Romantics'. > >It should be noted, however, that American usage is to place periods inside >the quotes even if they represent the outside sentence. This is illogical >but, in my opinion, more pleasing to the eye. (With most fonts--it looks >horrid, actually, with vertical quote marks.) Of course, my eye was raised >mostly reading American typesetting . . . Actually, it isn't an ``Americanism'' at all. According to three different sources I checked, punctuation belongs INSIDE the quotation marks under most conditions. Well, actually that isn't quite true. One of the sources [_Write Stuff_ by Jan Venolia] said that ellipsis, periods, and commas are always to be placed inside, but EXCLAMATION MARKS and QUESTION MARKS go OUTSIDE unless they are bound to the sentence. (By ``bound'' I mean that the mark is part of the quotation or would substantially hinder reading, as might happen with a quote in the middle of the sentence.) Hmmm...... LL -=- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | I've tried to avoid all of this, but I can't. | She's out there, somewhere [my advisor], Loyde W. Hales | And I've got to go to work. [She expects research results!]