Hacker News Reader

Comment by 3chelon | Hacker News Reader

They lost me at "independance".

It is a common spelling mistake for people from a French background.

Fair enough. It's a common mistake for people from an English background, too, but these days we have tools to eliminate typos like that.

He meant independence is spelled indépendance in French. Close enough to overlook the differences. I agree the writing is awkward and they would benefit from some proofing

Why ?

Spelling.

The period goes in the quotation at the end of a sentence, like "so."

Not in British typography (it does in American).

That's interesting. I do it the British way when I write English (because it's the way we do it in my native language in my native country too).

What's the rationale for enclosing the punctuation within the quotation marks? It's not part of the quote after all. What happens if the sentence is a question that ends with a quote? If the quote itself isn't a question, enclosing the question mark would interfere with its meaning.

Is the idea that quotes always should use proper punctuation too, and that if the ending mark is the same as the one finishing the sentence the quote ends, then it's superfluous to write it twice?

I realize this might not be an easy question and that the answer may well be "just because".

You know, I really don't know: it always looks strange and wrong to me. I can live with American fondness for the "Oxford comma" (enumerating "one, two, and three"), but that has some justification in terms of clarity (if the final item has an "and" in itself, like "ready salted, paprika, cheese and onion" crisps/chips). So "just because" seems most likely :-)

I used to always put the full-stop (period) inside the quotes because I was brought up using that rule, but in modern writing it's considered more a matter of stylistic choice, because yes, sometimes it just looks, well, "wrong."

> I realize this might not be an easy question and that the answer may well be "just because".

No, the answer is "just because."

IIRC it's a result of technical issues on early typewriters

Reply on news.ycombinator.com