… if you are not a style-conscious writer, editor, or otherwise a word-nerd.
Otherwise, move on; there is nothing to see here.
9 thoughts on “Do Not Follow This Link …”
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… if you are not a style-conscious writer, editor, or otherwise a word-nerd.
Otherwise, move on; there is nothing to see here.
Comments are closed.
I have always followed the British rule: punctuation follows the quotes, unless it is contained in the quoted material. The so-called “American method”, in my opinion, leads to confusion and disorder.
See how much better that looks than this:
The so-called “American method,” in my opinion, leads to confusion and disorder.
The above is just *wrong*; there is no comma in the phrase “American method”, and thus it should not look like it’s being quoted.
Otherwise, my punctuation is American through and through; and yes, I do use semicolons! 🙂
A related argument is the A, B, and C or A, B and C. It’s those pesky commas. They cause rampant confusion.
I firmly support the use of serial commas, for they eliminate the possibility of think that B and C are a unit distinct from A.
The classic textbook example is “The club elected a president, vice-president, secretary and treasurer.”
Are the offices of secretary and treasurer to be understood as combined in one person (sometimes they are!), or are they two different people? The serial comma, if appropriate, makes it clear that they are two people.
I also advocate keeping the comma in direct address. There is some difference between “Let’s eat, James” and “Let’s eat James.”
I was taught in no uncertain terms that there should NOT be a comma before the “and” in a list, and followed that for probably 20-30 years; lately I’ve come more around to your way of thinking.
Erik, if you read the article, you saw that the reason for placing the period and comma inside the quotation marks was typographical rather than semantic.
In a somewhat similar vein, I have been advised by Web-design gurus not to use semicolons because they do not show up well in typical computer-screen resolution. Perhaps a careful Web designer would boldface all of them. 🙂
And sense should yield to typography? *sniff* I rather think not. 😉
I was taught the serial comma method but have run into many who do not feel it is correct. I agree that the direct address comma can definitely prevent confusion (and cannibalism).
Oh, absolutely. Direct address commas are important.
Speaking as a letter artist, I gotta say that what pleases the eye on a surface often overrules the logical sense of a phrase or sentence represented on a surface.
To my eyes, the outside comma hangs, and looks bad compared to the inside comma. And we do want our representations of words and language to look good, even on a computer screen.
Otherwise, nobody’d hire web designers and surf to those bad web page sites. (Chas, how about you add some sparkles and flashers and web dollies to your page? And cramp down on the line spacing, so we don’t have to scroll down so much. And let’s get some dark colored illegible fonts on dark backgrounds, too. I mean, I’m actually READING this page, now!)
Punctutation conventions do change. We understand outside commas. But they do pose a design challenge. For some. (And I’ll admit that I’m raised in the American conventions and that I’m a dinosaur.)