The Rise of “Logical Punctuation” (2011) | Hacker News Reader

The Rise of “Logical Punctuation” (2011)

slate.com

61 pointsanishathalye50 comments

"As a result, I have recently instituted a one-point penalty on every assignment for infractions."

These were always the worst type of teachers. When the majority of students are telling you and insisting that you are wrong, you are most likely wrong. This is especially true when they are able to provide a justification for their answer.

When a quote is used it is my firm belief that what goes inside the quotes should be a literal copy of whatever you are quoting. A full stop or a comma can in some cases modify the meaning of the quote and should not go inside the quotes because it makes the meaning of the quote ambiguous. For example if I used the above quote at the end of a sentence it would be unclear if the quote itself contained the period or if the period was just there to close my sentence.

Grammar has changed significantly over time and will continue to change. The argument that "that's the way we do it" doesn't hold water in my mind. It was a poor way of doing things to begin with so we should change.

</rant>

I tend to agree with you, but I'd like to understand better the mental process that leads him to penalize students for an approach that he concedes is logically preferable. My guess is that he thinks he's doing them a service by showing them how their writing will be judged "in the real world".

Perhaps someone who agrees with the author's approach can offer better insight?

The author teaches courses on Journalism. Agree with the logical style all you want, professional journalism is written according to style guides, and those style guides more often than not dictate American Style punctuation. In this case, "the real world" includes the newspapers his students wish to end up employed at.

In the case of a professor taking marks off for punctuation issues when writing essays on history or economics or engineering, I agree that's wasteful.

The "real world" of journalism is now highly globalized and casualized. Young journalists should expect to work for a large number of publications as interns, freelancers or short-term staffers. In this climate, adaptability is a core skill.

It is perfectly appropriate for an instructor to specify a style for an assignment and grade accordingly. Dogmatically teaching only one style is outmoded and actively harmful.

A pugnacious case for this position ("doing them a service by showing them how their writing will be judged") was made by DFW in his very long essay on English usage [http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-0...]. See the bottom of page 53, or see just the basic excerpt at: https://www.reddit.com/r/SRSDiscussion/comments/xp3i4/race_a... .

DFW, who of course did teach writing, got significant pushback in the letters the next month. There's no winning this particular debate.

I would have loathed this teacher as a student. Fifteen years later I kind of get it – maybe it's right or wrong, but there is something to be said for writing to your audience and your medium. And papers written for this guy should use illogical punctuation. Probably writing code and doing code reviews has increased my sympathy: I frequently reject code that uses a style I might theoretically prefer, but which is not consistent. This can add some tedium to reviews for both parties.

Of course since it's a one-way non-discussion point penalty that will possibly affect your permanent record, it's a little annoying, but that's just the shittiness of school.

If I were in charge of reviewing code for a coworker I might object to their coding style as a matter of preference but if they were able to provide a reasoning for their position then I would "pass" them without requiring them to modify the code.

This is the type of instruction the does not teach critical thinking that is crucial for success in higher education. Instead it teaches the student to memorize the book no matter how wrong it may seem. It also teaches them that the authority in any situation has the absolute ability to determine what is right and wrong, not that one style might be appropriate in some situations and inappropriate in others.

If I were writing a novel, I might use the illogical American style because I don't anticipate quoting other individuals and having to convey their exact meaning.

In philosophy courses I struggled with this because professors would request that I quote exactly, but also request that I put the period inside the quotes. As a result the style of the paper and the readability would both stuffer while I was stuck putting in more effort to disambiguate what I was trying to say when it could have been done in a simpler manner. The solution was often block-style quotes at the beginning of a section and references back to that section, or direct references to a page and line no. in the book.

I think camlCase is stupid. I prefer the traditional c_unix_form. But am I going to go into a camlCase codebase and start putting underscores everywhere because I think they're better?

If we were writing a group paper, this may apply. But you would choose to use c_unix_form on your own projects, no?

But in the real world, you're usually going to be writing in a context where your writing will be read alongside work written by others. E.g. a corporate report, a newspaper or magazine article, etc. If you're writing a novel, sure, do whatever you want.

I was with you until here: "'that's the way we do it' doesn't hold water in my mind."

One way people can mean that is pure exercise of authority. "My way or the highway." I agree that's bunk.

But there's another way to mean it. Take driving on two-way streets. It doesn't really matter which side we drive on; driving on the right works just as well as driving on the left. But it matters a lot that we pick one and stick with it. Why do Americans drive on the right? That's just the way we do it.

As somebody who used to do page layout, I appreciate the convention of putting punctuation inside. As a programmer, I appreciate the convention of putting it outside. Neither is "wrong"; they're both fine ways of dealing with something. But in a given context, I think it's important to pick one; otherwise you get editing chaos and a bad reading experience.

Since the guy is a journalism professor, it's his job to teach students how to work in a professional journalistic context. Whether or not students personally think the comma should go inside or outside is irrelevant. They need to learn how to work within an organization's professional stylebook. Those things are filled with debatable points, because if everybody saw it the same way, there'd be no reason to write down a rule for it.

In docking points here, he's doing the right thing. He's not just demanding conformance with his personal preference. He's demanding that they learn how to write like professionals.

I intended the first meaning if my original comment wasn't clear. I agree that could be read either way and indeed, convention is useful in some situations. As far as driving on one side of the road or the other, if there were a compelling reason to switch sides of the road and it were practical to do so then it might make sense to switch. I don't believe that is the case, especially because road safety relies on a homogeneous rule set. Writing is not this way and using one style when it is appropriate does not affect the legibility of another independent body of text as long as the rule set is applied consistently in a particular body.

I don't think the drive-on-the-right rule is only about safety. It's also about efficiency. We could also be safe without the rule, we'd just go a lot slower. I note that we have the same stay-on-the-right rule for walking, and it'd be hard to argue that it's mainly about safety there.

As the author explains, for journalists the rule is widely consistent by country, which is a sign that, as with driving, there's something pushing us toward consistency.

Given that there's a switching cost, and given that journalists change employers (and often write for multiple publications), and given that material gets reused between publications), I think there's good reason to have widespread agreement.

Although I disagree with the professor on this, I do understand his point.

A lot of what people learn in college is simply how to fit in among social elites and follow their norms. Lots of people place a high amount of importance on "proper" spelling and grammar. And rather than recognizing them as largely arbitrary social conventions, they'll deride those who do not use them as stupid or uneducated. There are simply millions of spelling/grammar nazis on Facebook.

Copy editors are probably the most conservative to style change that there is. Because their mastery of arcane style rules is their "moat" or competitive advantage.

The author admits that "logical punctuation" is an equally valid form, and can even point to publications for which it is the house style. So why is he taking points away from his students when they use it? It strikes me as a rather petty way of enforcing a particular stylistic choice where it doesn't really matter.

I never liked the idea of changing the content of a quote for any reason.

Let's say I go on the record saying something like this:

> Code reviews are worthless when it comes to those nasty little runtime corner cases that crop up now and again.

I sure as hell wouldn't want you writing the following:

> Mr. So-and-so was quoted today as saying "Code reviews are worthless."

Punctuation isn't just there for decoration. It has meaning. Injecting full stops into quotes in places they don't actually exist not only doesn't make any logical sense, it can actually change the meaning of the quote in very significant ways.

Moreover, in the tech world, these punctuation characters often have actual technical meanings and being precise can be very important. For example, consider the following punctuations of a quote:

- "Resolve the DNS record for example.com.".

- "Resolve the DNS record for example.com".

- "Resolve the DNS record for example.com."

Only the first and second quotes are unambiguous. The third, which is supposedly correct, is unable to differentiate between a meaningful trailing period, which in DNS means to not use search domains, and the period inserted to end the sentence. While these issues are rare, logical punctuation solves this problem.

Oh wow, the American-style has always just felt wrong to me and I've just chosen to ignore it in my personal writing, for most of the reasons stated in the article. But I've had to write it professionally, as a reporter, because of the Associated Press style guide [1].

Good to know there's an actual substantive debate...but of course there is; there always is a big debate when it comes to anything grammar :)

[1] https://www.brandeis.edu/communications/digital/images/apsty...

I'd be interested to know more about the origin of the illogical punctuation. All the article says is:

> According to Rosemary Feal, executive director of the MLA, it was instituted in the early days of the Republic in order "to improve the appearance of the text. A comma or period that follows a closing quotation mark appears to hang off by itself and creates a gap in the line (since the space over the mark combines with the following word space)."

So, quotes come into use to mark quoted passages in the 17th century [1], and are used inside punctuation. Other European languages develop similar or different conventions for quotes, but (based on a quick look at some newspaper websites), all put the quotes inside the punctuation. Typesetters across Europe happily follow this convention for the next three centuries and counting.

But some time in the late 18th or early 19th century, American typesetters suddenly realise that it looks better the other way round (and at some point persuade the Canadians too). An observation which has apparently escaped the typesetters of the old world, of whom there are probably ten times as many, for a century or two.

This doesn't make any sense.

Why did the Americans actually adopt this convention? Was this Noah Webster up to his old tricks again?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#History

It's possible that we did it as an intentional Americanism. Which I hear is how we ended up drinking coffee over tea.

Coffee was also a big cash crop in the new world and would have been a lot cheaper in the U.S. than in Europe, so maybe that was it?

I don't know. But I do know that the Dutch style is the same as the American style, as I think are several other continental European styles.

Actually, apparently most style guides currently recommend logical punctuation, but in literature the American style is used almost everywhere.

This claim is unfounded:

"the vast majority of the legion of logical punctuators are not consciously rejecting illogical American style, or consciously imitating the British. Rather, they follow their intuition because they don't know the American rules. They don't know the rules because they don't read enough. Don't read enough edited prose, that is;"

I have read mountains of professionally-edited prose in my lifetime, and I still use the "logical" punctuation when I write. I know damn well it's not the "proper" style here in the States.

Hell, my attachment to logical punctuation extends past quotes. If I'm ending a sentence with a hyperlink, the period goes outside the [link]. Except in the rare cases where I'm linking to something with a period in its name.

I wonder if Mr. Yagoda is still giving students a point off for ever use of logical punctuation in their papers, or if four years of fighting his futile battle for MLA/AP usage has finally worn him down.

A hyperlink is an especially problematic example, as periods are valid in a url (even if it's a bit unusual to end with one).

I agree that things not part of the quoted material should not be inside the quotes.

However, I don't see why that means they have to be outside the quotes. There's a cozy and quaint area below the quote that could serve as a wonderful place for a period or comma to settle in and set up shop to ply its trade.

I'd like to see quote-period and quote-comma get ligatures.

It does seem like this should satisfy people on both sides of the argument.

There is a historical case for this, as the entire reason for the "illogical" style to exist in the first place is to emulate period under quote in professionally typeset (with metal) prose, but using the limited medium of the typewriter.

The limitations of typewriters have also led to a number of other conventions baked into american style guides, such as placing two spaces after a period. It's amazing how strongly these odd rules are being held onto well after the typewriter has been made irrelevant.

I have heard the claim that this style dates to the introduction of typewriters, which required an ordering of the characters. Beforehand, it was customary to print the quotation marks over the period,which can be done on a printing press.

I am not a graphic designer, but I did work in the publishing business earlier in my career, and this is exactly how I was taught to lay type up by hand: The quotes go somewhat over the period. There are similar things going on when you put quotes at the beginning of a line: They hang out a little over the margin.

If you have a period, like this. “Followed by a quote, like this,” The space between the period and the quote will be smaller than the space between a period and a capital letter.

Most of this matters most with large type, such as titles or block quotes.

Interesting detail. So technology should fix what technology broke and the debate would be over.

It's already done. Unicode provides non-spacing modifiers which will overlay the previous codepoint. So you can type, for example, either U+0301 (COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT) or U+030b (COMBINING DOUBLE ACUTE ACCENT) over the period or comma.

I was wondering about that. But I don't think accent characters are intended for that. They don't seem to work for punctuation. We would have to use COMBINING DOT BELOW with a zero width space.

"This looks baḍ̋

Edit: Actually make that a space, maybe it's the proportional font

"This looks still bad ̣̋

Fast forward about 15 minutes to where a student in the class codes up a linter for essays which changes correctly presented quotes to the style the teacher requests. LaTeX + Gulp!

Oh huh, it's weird to think about microsoft word's spelling and grammar checker as a linter. I like that it.

It sure would have been cool to be able to write custom lint rules when I was writing a lot of history papers. Like: If I start two neighboring paragraphs with the same word, as long as that word isn't "The" or "A". (This was a bad habit I had...)

Stick a fork in it, it's done.

I was typing in a list of blurbs this morning, titles for a to-do list. I thought about putting the punctuation the "right" way inside the quotes, then didn't do it. At some point it's better to get your message across clearly than it is to follow strict rules.

Relatedly, we're starting to see the rise of two words joined together, aka JavaScript, or SyFy. Looks like computers are doing all sorts of odd things to our punctuation.

The author misses another big cause--the auto period on iOS puts it on the outside. Something that always bugs me, and I'm constantly going back and correcting.

It might be because English is not my first language and that rule doesn't exist in my mother tongue, but I've always written like that (also, I don't use the Oxford comma and I won't, it just looks weird to me).

It occurs to me that the influx of non-native English speakers in social media/collaborative sites has at least something to do with this change.

That's funny, because it seems to me like the Oxford comma is the logical rule. The American standard is a special case: "use a comma to separate items in the list, except the 'and' substitutes for the comma before the last time".

My objection to the universal application of the Oxford comma (whether it adds clarity or not) is that a comma in written English essentially always take the place of a short pause in spoken English.

When used to form a list in spoken English, these short pauses create a kind of rote rhythm: "While you're at the store, buy milk, carrots, rice, flour, and chocolate." In reading written English, the "grocery list" effect can carry over, and I often find it undesirable, particularly for small sets that carry their own rhythm[1].

I don't have any such difficulty with logical style. If anything, it's the reverse: Preserving the original "nesting" makes it clearer how the sentence would and should be read, aloud or mentally.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_... (Note that Jefferson's original version with a nominal "Oxford comma" repeats the ampersand as well, which produces a nice alternative effect).

> My objection to the universal application of the Oxford comma (whether it adds clarity or not) is that a comma in written English essentially always take the place of a short pause in spoken English.

But exactly that's how I parse things in lists.

For example: "Life (short pause) Liberty (short pause) and the pursuit of happiness".

See I didn't grow up thinking I was using commas to separate list items, I grew up thinking I was contracting a bunch "and"s. That is:

  A red one and a blue one and a green one and a purple one.
  became
  A red one, a blue one, a green one and a purple one.

Notably kids seem to do the first one naturally.

If commas were list separators and not just a short hand why would we end them with "and" at all.

Possible reason: to distinguish the list from an "or" list.

It was more of a rhetorical question from 6-8 year old me. Yeah, though, and certainly there's other reasons, like distinguishing it from a bunch of dependent clauses. That we elide "and"s when speaking a list is of course a point in favor of the comma being a separator not a replacement too.

At the end of the day it's English; we just do what feels good.

The American standard is logical: command and "and" are interchangeable:

"A and B and C"

"A, B, C"

"A, B and C"

The Oxford style is inconsistently, doubling up command and "and" in the last item.

This is silliness. There are two styles because English grammar is a not a precisely logical formal language. Neither side is wrong; English is ambiguous.

After reading the article and most of the comments, I still find one point unclear: if the period does logically belong inside the comma, does it also end the sentence?

For example:

> He wrote "I live here." Then he stopped writing.

> He wrote "I live here.". Then he stopped writing.

Of course the latter is the least aesthetic, but is it not the most logical?

Yes. If a quote ends with a period, then it ends the sentence. If the sentence shouldn't end there, then the period is replaced with a comma (even if the quote was of a complete sentence).

> He wrote "I live here," and then he stopped writing.

This rule only applied to periods, though -- if the sentence ends with (say) a question mark, then you leave it in:

> He wrote, "Do I live here?" and then he stopped writing.

I would have put a comma after the last quotation mark.

Personally, I think instructors put too much emphasis on punctuation. I had one instructor ding me for not spelling out numbers between 0-10. I still don't know if he was right. I don't really care.

Looking back he had some issues. This Doctor would love to argue with the boys. We were all so young. We didn't understand why he would make such a big deal out of little errors. Dr. B said, "Come to my office after class!" Looking back, I'm suprised he didn't offer us wine in those pointless office visits.

This seems like a good place to use ligatures to shrink most of the white space between quotes and following punctuation marks. I do it when I'm writing informally because yeah it's the sensible way to do it, but it does sometimes look awkward.

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