the grammar police are still on leave
Amanda takes on one of my pet peeves, and expresses her irritation with people who don't know that punctuation is generally supposed to go inside quotation marks. She's right to be irked: this is elementary school shit. Amanda, if it's any consolation, I know that this rule exists. I just ignore it.
File it under "ways computers have destroyed my brain", I guess (along with the rest of this blog). But when I'm writing I look at clauses as logical units, and punctuation as the modifiers, operators and delimiters that one applies to those units. In the first sentence of this paragraph I intended for ways computers have destroyed my brain to remain an atomic, whole unit that operates as a plural noun. A trailing comma isn't part of that unit — so why should it go inside the quotation marks, which function as the unit's delimiters?
I admit that this probably sounds like gibberish to people who aren't programmers, logicians or other varieties of weirdo. And I'll admit I'm somewhat inconsistent on this score: when dealing with dialogue I follow the rules. I've tried to break them, but it doesn't work. "Hmm," I'll think, "That just doesn't look right." I excuse this hypocrisy by arguing that the clause of which the quote is the object generally ought to be inserted into the quote at a point where a comma would naturally reside — thus making the comma a part of the quote-unit, and properly included within the quotes. But as you can probably tell from the length of the preceding sentence, I'm really just fooling myself.
It doesn't matter, though. At this point these are tics I can't help any more than I can avoid constant overuse of emdashes. My English-teacher grandmother would be crushed if she knew.
Comments
Amanda is wrong and you are right. Let's say I wanted to quote someone's asking a question—about the time, say. "He asked me 'what time is it?'." is the only logical way to write it.
Perhaps you can move to England, where end-quotes tend to be put inside end punctuation marks. Will Catherine go for that?
Even drastic measures like that, however, wouldn't fix the first sentence of this post. Let alone that the verbs switch tenses mid-stream, the comma separating them shouldn't be there.
Tom, I totally agree with you & felt the same way. Logically, that grammar rule never made any sense to me so I elected to not follow it. Fuck 'em.
matt: whoops. the tense switching is a typo (s and d are so close!), but the comma is my own stupidity. I'll leave the latter for posterity.
that's another rule I have trouble with (but respect): no comma unless you've got a subject for each clause.
yay, i know that matt's right about the comma because of the illustrious watch your words, a book forced down my throat the first quarter of school. but anyway, amanda's right, and i find doing it any other way very unnatural.
The first sentence Amanda provides is an illustration of why she's wrong wrong wrong.
Now, let's say that we wanted to use personal pronouns instead of names. Would we write this:or this?I submit: the former. Why? Because the latter is two discrete sentences, while the former is one. How do we know this? Because the question mark is inside the quotation marks; that is, it's quoted. It's not ending the sentence in which the quotation occurs.What if you were quoting something in which what punctuation was used actually mattered? For instance, a written text (so it wouldn't be a matter of interpretation), and you disagree with someone. Would you write,
or Again, the former, because the latter is textually inaccurate. Furthermore, you're making a statement, not asking a question, so you ought properly to end the sentence with a period. (Another possibility is to take the second option above, but end it with '... not "foo bar baz?."'. I don't think anyone would assent to that.)While we're putting the smack down on the first sentence of grammar-nitpicking posts, you left out the "c" in "punctuation," and Amanda uses "periphery" as an adjective.
Also, the U.S. rule is not "punctuation goes inside quotes." It's "commas and periods go inside quotes." Is it "punctuation goes inside quotes"? No. (I think that when you already have a punctuation mark inside the quotes, as in Ben's last two quoted sentences, you have to put the comma outside, by the Pauli Exclusion Principle.)
It has been pointed out to Ben before that his view commits him to saying things like "She said, 'Punctuation marks go inside quotes.'." But he doesn't care. I admire that.
In fact, if I had written Weiner's last paragraph, I would have done it like this:
Wouldn't you have done it like: "... and myself"?
Maybe I like referring to myself in the third person? Note that the first sentence still says "to Ben", not "to me". (It manifestly does not say "to Ben,", Amanda.)
bah! fixed the missing c. I really ought to be extra-careful when I write this kind of post.
But he doesn't care. I admire that.
that's interesting. it just makes me want to kick his ass.
But catherine, you know I love you! Why you gotta be so mean?
i love you too, ben. just the sort of love where i occasionally want to beat you up.
It's a love that she expresses to her friends more frequently than you might believe.
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