Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Also according to the Internet, "you" is spelled "u". Everyone should adjust their internal dictionaries so that u don't become an establishment sellout.

Personally, it makes sense for "scare quotes" to not contain punctuation, as they are not complete sentences. But it doesn't make sense for direct quotes to not contain punctuation, as in `He said, "Hello there".' He didn't say "Hello there", he said "Hello there."

(It might seem logical to have two periods in that case, but it's ugly, so the second one can just be omitted for maximum conciseness. That's why the period goes inside the quotation marks. Similarly, it would be confusing and ugly to pretend to end a sentence in the middle of a sentence, so quotes that are not at the end of the sentence "end" with a comma. The period is a pretty strong message to pause, and you don't want to overuse it.

IMO.)

With the end-of-statement period, I agree you can make that case, but it's done with other punctuation as well, since the American rule is more of a typographical rule than a semantic one (you put low-on-the-line punctuation before high-on-the-line punctuation).

For example:

  British: "I would not", he objected, "enjoy that".
  American: "I would not," he objected, "enjoy that."

The period is arguably part of the quoted statement as you say, but the comma definitely isn't.

Strange. I am British and I was taught your American style. And have always done it that way.

The British style would actually include the period/full stop in this case, since it's quoted speech and the quoted speech ends with a period.

Hence the "logical" bit. It's not logical to have the period or commas outside of the quote if the quote actually includes a period or comma.

If the period is part of the quote, it would be inside the quote, as in `He said, "Hello there."' I thought the article made that pretty clear. Certainly nobody argued for two periods.

I use two periods.

I'm pretty sure the article is in agreement with you that when the punctuation is part of the quote, then it remains in the quotes. For example, he said "Hello, there."

Why do you choose to omit the second rather than the first period? If you're after conciseness, surely either is up for ommission, and the external period unambiguously means the current sentence is at an end. An internal period is ambiguous as to whether the current sentence ends or not.

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