Another day in excruciating mouth pain. Fortunately, I get to see my surgeon today, so I'm keeping the Captain's Log brief. Talking still hurts, hydrocodone still fogs the brain, and I'm still not entirely convinced this implant isn't trying to kill me.
Anyway, punctuation.
You've probably seen one of those memes floating around the internet.
"I invited the strippers, Hitler and Stalin." vs. "I invited the strippers, Hitler, and Stalin."
Different party. Different guests. Different arrest warrants.
Now, I've always followed the standard (American) rule in regular writing: periods and commas go inside the quotes. So you'd write:
Captain Kirk said, "Abandon ship."
No one's confused by that.
But when it comes to technical writing - especially when you're showing people what to literally type - I have never liked that rule. If I'm writing:
Type in "your name."
...then someone unfamiliar with computers might think they're supposed to type the period too.
And in programming or query design, that stuff matters. Type one extra character, and your SQL statement fails. Your VBA code breaks. Your Access form pops up with an error message that would make a Vulcan cry.
You know who we have to thank for this weird punctuation rule? Not English scholars. Not brilliant grammarians. But typesetters. Literal printing press guys in the 1700s who had to figure out how to fit little metal letters into a tray. They made arbitrary layout choices based on what looked good or fit better on the block. And whichever printers published the most books? Their style just stuck. No grammar council. No public vote. Just whatever was easier to typeset. (1)
So in my own manuals, courses, and examples, I always leave the punctuation outside the quotes unless it's part of the thing you're actually typing. That way there's no ambiguity. What you see inside the quotes is what goes into the computer. Period.
And now I return to the soft-food realm, where ice cream (2) is a medical necessity and commas are the least of my problems.
(1) Yes, I know British English handles this differently. They generally do put commas and periods outside the quotes. For once, I side with the Brits. Logical punctuation for the win.
(2) Just kidding. I'm not letting this toothache derail my fitness progress. No ice cream. This time it's high-protein yogurt. For my first oral surgery around 6 months ago, before I started caring about my diet, I went through like 6 pints of Haagen-Dazs. Since then, I've been loving this stuff: Ratio Protein Yogurt. Oikos Pro is a close second. So much better for you than ice cream, too.
(3) You may sometimes see this written as "Live long, and prosper." In this case, the comma for dramatic effect to add a pause. So if Captain Kirk would have said it, you could expect random commas everywhere. "Live,,,,,, long and,,,,,,,,,,,, prosper."
That last example reminds me of playing with voice synthesis for the first time. If you just typed in a sentence, it would generally mash words together because it had no concept of spacing. You'd have to manually put extra commas in there where you wanted it to pause an extra half second, and so the stuff that you typed in would literally look like that. I also thought it was magical in 1983 when I could get my Coco 2 to say stuff to me.
Matt Hall
@Reply 9 months ago
I do the same. I am frequently trying to convey cable numbers, equipment names, etc.. It is surprising how unquestioning and literal some people can be when making engraved tags or CAD drawings.
By the way, I'm pretty sure ice cream/gelato is one of the four food groups.
Thomas Gonder
@Reply 9 months ago
I had a friend and his wife over for dinner. After, the women went to chat in the parlor and we boys went to my newish 286 with a sound card, which came with a horrible text to speech program. Barely recognizable, but Michael came up with a good phrase that the wives weren't too impressed with. "Hey, be a good wife and give your husband a fabulous...". The word fabulous had an interesting pronunciation. We recorded it, and it had as long a life as a good whoopie cushion.
Joe Holland
@Reply 9 months ago
Rules are interesting, standards may be helpful, but communicating clearly wins. If the person receives the message as intended, you have done your job.
Bill Carver
@Reply 9 months ago
A woman without her man is nothing. Let me rephrase that (to save my life)
A woman; without her, man is nothing.
That's better, but I'll take the 5th Amendment on which one is true..
But if the latter were true, you would have to press "escape," which could. confusing if you put it in quotes. So instead you could use either square or squiggly brackets, such as this one here [Escape]. Then the period doesn't have to be inside the. inside the brackets. That's so much better.
The other possibility is to put them inside of double double quotes. Press """escape""." But I think the brackets are the most clear since. to this day, it's probably evidenced by my lack of proper use of double double quotes or at least my surety. When I run into the double double quotes, I usually just paste the line into copilot or chat GPT and it will correct it for me but Emphasizing by other means than quotes is probably your best bet.
Finally, I'd like to take a moment to take your mind off of the mouth pain. with this quote, "It was fun, 0 my." Yes, folks that quote is way more painful than any mouth surgery could possibly be.
Thomas Gonder
@Reply 9 months ago
As Joe H. stated, the point is to be clear when it's important. If it's not important, why are you writing it? {Old university comms professor.}
The Oxford comma rule doesn't always remove ambiguity, {just there, the grammar checker added the superfluous comma} and it's not allowed in some USA based writing styles.
There's lots of "rules" for the comma, some making more sense than others to me.
"Let's eat", we said to Grandma. {Not considered "correct" by some, but I like all my punctuation outside the quote.}
Michael Olgren
@Reply 9 months ago
I am definitely in the minority, fighting a losing battle on this point. Our language is devolving. More and more people today toss proper punctuation, spelling, and grammar to the wayside (although I'm fine with Rick's points above regarding programming). Worse still, people allow the degradation of the meaning of words. The anti-intelligence crowd happily abandons the rules of language on its inexorable march to anarchy. Similarly, we decrease our vocabulary, sticking to simple vulgarity to convey thoughts we cannot construct using descriptive words. It's all straight out of 1984...
Oh, I lost all respect for the keepers of the English language when they decided to add to the dictionary that "literally" could also mean "figuratively."
Matt Hall
@Reply 9 months ago
Michael I agree completely with what you are saying. I think Richard was just addressing a niche case for situations that did not exist when the rules were formed, for the purpose of clarity. He even demonstrates including punctuation in the quotes when it part of a spoken quote.
To me, what you are raising is a very important but different issue. To your point, in popular culture we seem to glorify ignorance. As a society, I don't think that we have not taken education seriously as we should. Until we become more deliberate about educating our youth, little is likely to change. Thankfully, my kids were far better educated at high school graduation than I was.
Thomas Gonder
@Reply 9 months ago
Michael I'm trying to remember the name of a novel a friend loaned me back in the early 80s. The plot was based upon a 50-year-out-future where the people talked in short phrases, not making a lot of sense, often electronically. It was supposed to be futuristic, but it reminded me of cavemen grunting. Hmmmm.
Thomas that rang a few bells too. I asked GPT about it...
That sounds very much like "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess, though it was published earlier (1962) and is set in a dystopian future. The characters use a slang language called Nadsat, which can feel like grunting or gibberish until you get used to it. But that's not exactly 50 years in the future from the '80s.
Another strong possibility is "Riddley Walker" by Russell Hoban (published 1980). It's set in a post-apocalyptic future, and the entire novel is written in a kind of broken, devolved English that mimics how language might decay over generations. People speak in short, confusing phrases, almost like cavemen trying to reconstruct civilization.
If he's talking about something with electronic communication and fractured language, "Neuromancer" by William Gibson (1984) might also come to mind, but the language there is more cyberpunk jargon than caveman-esque.
I've read A Clockwork Orange, but not the other two.
In any case... sounds like SMS communication today. LOL
Thomas Gonder
@Reply 9 months ago
Richard None of those books ring a bell, but it was a long time ago. If I remember correctly, it wasn't exactly post-apocalyptic, more along the lines of a Blade Runner future. Not that I remember much of Blade Runner either. I don't usually go back and rewatch old movies I've seen. I'm guessing there were dozens of books that had that language degradation as part of the story.
However, you did nail the point of my post with SMS msgs and other chat channels.
In the early 2000s, I bought flip cell phones for the family. SMS texting was the new thing. I got the first bill, which was hundreds of dollars. I asked my son to hand me his phone. I opened it up, checked his messages and there was a long list of: "Waz up", "Hey nothin", "K, later" and 10 minutes later the same 3 messages with all his friends. All month long.
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