TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2002-09 > 1032293388


From: "Darrell"<>
Subject: Re: [TMG] v4.0d - Sentence construction and quotes
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 16:09:56 -0400


Hi:

Although I worked as a proofreader many a long
year ago, I do not find the supposedly standard
American style (terminal punctuation inside of
double quotation marks) to be logical. The
original reason had to do with the visual aspects
of the typography, etc.

My practice is to make a distinction between the
two uses of quotation marks. One is to set off
direct discourse (quoting a person's or document's
exact words) as opposed to indirect discourse
(paraphrasing a person's meaning). The other is
to emphasize words with the idea of "so to speak,"
or "one might say," or the titles of works, etc.

In the first case, I try to make sure that, just
as only the original's exact words are included,
so only the original's exact punctuation is
included. So I go beyond "verbatim et literatim,"
to "verbatim et literatim et punctuationem." So
to speak [grin].

In the case of emphasized words that are not
direct discourse or exact quotations, I try to
follow the so-called typographical convention and
put the punctuation inside the quotes.

I am not going to lose sleep over this. If an
option is provided -- *after* all the reports are
running smoothly and all the bugs are ironed out
-- I will have to choose whether to use it. I may,
and I may not.

Darrell


This thread: