Punctuation 1

Dec 11, 2009 10:09

This is the first of a series of posts I plan to write on the subject "Punctuation ( Read more... )

writing, punctuation

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Comments 28

aigooism December 11 2009, 12:34:59 UTC
With the whole punctuation inside (or don't you mean outside? O_O;;) closing quotation marks, I always thought putting it outside(?) was more logical than putting it inside(?) ala American style. When I was teaching myself to write stories back in eighth grade, that's how I taught myself, but then in university, I was given a wake up call on how it's not proper in American writing style. O_O;; So I had to force myself to do it the American way (even if I am American XD) in my formal essays, but I still refuse to do it in personal writings ( ... )

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ptyx December 11 2009, 12:39:25 UTC
I edited the post and explained the inside/outside issue better. Please read it again and tell me if now it's clearer now!

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aigooism December 11 2009, 12:41:01 UTC
Much better! ^^

. . . Btw, is your website down? It doesn't seem to load in my browser O_O;

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ptyx December 11 2009, 12:48:56 UTC
Yes, it's down right now. Yesterday it was okay. Let's hope it's just temporarily.

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bethbethbeth December 11 2009, 12:36:05 UTC
Leaving Stevenson aside (although I do believe that's an authorial idiosyncrasy), where did you get the idea that Americans put punctuation outside closing quotation marks? The only time we do that is in academic papers/articles when parenthetical citations are used, e.g.,

...but he wrote that it was a "nightmare of epic proportions" (Orson 45).

Apart from that, Americans place all punctuation firmly inside closing quotations, even when it makes no sense whatsoever. It's the British style that allows for inside or outside punctuation, depending on the circumstances.

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ptyx December 11 2009, 12:39:53 UTC
I edited the post and explained the inside/outside issue better. Please read it again and tell me if now it's clearer now!

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bethbethbeth December 11 2009, 12:43:55 UTC
Heh. Yes, that makes perfect sense since it's the opposite of what was there before.

What makes me laugh is how often we have to edit when we're 'holding forth' on grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I had to edit my comment because I spelled Americans "American's" the first time. :)

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ptyx December 11 2009, 12:51:05 UTC
LOL, yes, I may have mixed up things. It's hard to explain this kind of thing, it's so... visual!

:D

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sistermagpie December 11 2009, 15:16:53 UTC
I still tend to do the quotes thing the British way, putting it outside if it doesn't belong to the quote--it's more instinctive for me that way, so it just confused me.

I would call Stevenson's use of semi-colons...idiocyncratic.:-) It reminds me of an author we used to publish when I worked at a publishing house, and she put a lot of meaning into her ellipses and wouldn't let the copyeditors just make it three dots if she'd put in five.

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ptyx December 11 2009, 15:23:08 UTC
Yeah, I heard that some Americans do it the British way. It's so confusing that when I posted the first version of this entry I said the opposite I wanted to say! (Ooops!)

LOL, totally idiocyncratic ;-). I love ellipses, and I too believe they are meaningful, but no, I'm happy with three dots, thank you...

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isiscolo December 11 2009, 15:59:40 UTC
This kind of semicolon use strikes me as Victorian. I am not bothered by it in the way I'm bothered by e.g. comma splices or the lack of quotation marks in certain literary works (like The Road or Angela's Ashes); instead, it acts as a style marker for me. For example, if I were writing a Victorian pastiche or wanted to convey that something was intended to seem archaic or old-fashioned, I would use a lot of semicolons.

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ptyx December 11 2009, 16:20:46 UTC
I read other books by Victorian authors and didn't notice this exaggerated use of semicolons, but you may be right. I'll research further!

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ptyx December 11 2009, 16:43:24 UTC
First results of my brief research:

Oscar Wilde ("The portrait of Dorian Gray") doesn't use many semicolons.

Dickens ("Oliver Twist") uses a lot of semicolons, but his periods are much longer than Stevenson's, so I believe he has more excuses to use them.

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ptyx December 11 2009, 16:50:19 UTC
After browsing "Jane Eyre" and "Barchester Towers": Yes, definitely the use of semicolon before "and" and "but" is a Victorian thing! But I still think Stevenson exaggerates :-)

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aqua_alta December 11 2009, 18:36:48 UTC

... )

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ptyx December 11 2009, 18:43:30 UTC
LOL! Thanks for illustrating my post adequately *hugs*

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aqua_alta December 12 2009, 23:17:54 UTC
I love punctuation - and that comic strip is one of the funniest things I've ever seen! On a slightly different but maybe a little related note: I remember sitting in a linguistics seminar, what? 14 years ago?, and our group was talking about generative grammar or something, and at one point we stopped and said: "If someone who had nothing to do with this whole thing was listening in on us, he'd call the guys in the white jackets stat..." I'm really enjoying your posts! *hugs*

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ptyx December 13 2009, 00:34:03 UTC
We have Grammar fetish! *hugs*

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