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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

While criticizing someone else's English it's almost guaranteed you'll make an error of your own. It's 'pidgin English', not 'pigeon'.

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Fixed, thanks. To be clear I'm actually criticising their ability to get a point across in a language they claim to speak and have studied with at degree level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry's_law

Sometimes known as "Skitt's Law". http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/skitt-s-law

No no it's pinyin English :-)

I upvoted you, but the comma after 'pidgin English' should really go inside the quote. i.e.

    It's 'pidgin English,' not 'pigeon'.

http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/08/punctuating-around...

That is correct, but I believe you meant 'e.g.' rather than 'i.e.': http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/ie-versus...

(If someone can spot an error I've made, this can go on forever. Wheee!) ;-)

No, their use of 'i.e.' was correct.

That's a style choice, and one that's largely rejected by this audience because we're used to logically nested programming languages.

We're also used, I hope, to juggling multiple types of syntax in the same project. This is no different.

Yes, and if the person you replied to were writing an academic article for the American Psychological Association they would be wise to follow their style guide in that context.

APA style is used far beyond psychology, and is one of the three most common styles of writing, the other two being MLA and Chicago.

Your source mentions that there are several punctuation styles and 'single quotes' + 'comma outside' corresponds to the British style.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html

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