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youtube.com - Musician and Best Buy employee, Keith Parsons, rocks his Best Buy holiday campaign audition.
257 Comments
- davidjunit, on 06/08/2009, -11/+344I never did like periods or commas inside the quotation marks. I don't know how to explain it properly but it's just my personal opinion that those items should go outside of quotations because they're used for separating phrases and only the actual text being quoted should be within quotation marks.
- dmoney51, on 06/09/2009, -2/+208Jane sounds like a bitch.
- krisrm, on 06/08/2009, -3/+193Yeah, this got me wondering why that rule was there in the first place. I mean, it's nice when you're writing things like
Jane said, "This is retarded."
in English/Language Arts classes, but realistically, I'd be writing something more along the lines of
Jane said "I hate you", and left.
which makes much more sense; there was no pause in her voice when she told me that she hated me. She just told me, and then left. End of story. - iDoraemon, on 06/09/2009, -1/+124Seeing how people write comments and posts on YouTube and video game discussion forums, respectively, the issue of periods and commas with quotation marks seems pretty minor.
- LiquidIse, on 06/09/2009, -0/+114For me I assume it comes from hierarchical things like math and coding. I'm not quoting the period, it is being used to end my sentence, thus belongs outside the quotes.
- Greg, on 06/09/2009, -3/+76Fun fact: Strangely enough, the "wrong" way /is/ the "Queen's English."
See: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pun1.htm
It's an American English convention to put punctuation inside quotes. The modern British way is the "wrong" one. - elnerdo, on 06/09/2009, -1/+66I personally like to mix it up. If the quote is a full sentence, then the period goes inside of the quotation.
Sally said, "That's ok, let's go to the mall instead."
But if the quote isn't a full sentence, then the period goes outside of the quotation.
Sally said that we should check out "the mall instead". - Gravix, on 06/09/2009, -5/+67There was just something _visually_ wrong with having a quotation mark end a sentence.
Ex:
Thats when Sally said "That's ok, lets go to the mall instead." Susy replied with a nod.
It just looks like one giant run-on! - exscind, on 06/09/2009, -13/+65I've always hated that idiotic rule (and never adhered to it). Bravo!
- rolf, on 06/09/2009, -7/+58I never followed that rule anyway. It's stupid. What looks more correct?
Did she say "I want a supreme pizza?"
or
Did she say "I want a supreme pizza"?
The first one makes it look like you're quoting a question and the second doesn't have that problem. - inactive, on 06/09/2009, -4/+51Unless you're quoting the punctuation marks... you should put them outside the quotes. Kinda makes sense doesn't it?
- Brassbud, on 06/09/2009, -3/+46I'm more interested in what Sally was refusing to do...
- wild, on 06/09/2009, -11/+53I disagree. I think "That's ok, lets go to the mall instead". looks funny. The period looks widowed.
- INTERNETMASTER, on 06/09/2009, -9/+49***** you, style!
- Big1984Brother, on 06/09/2009, -1/+37Is it possible that we nerds might also get people to start writing dates in the ISO 8601 format?
"2009-12-31" ... Not "12-31-2009".
Big-endian dates are easier to sort (and causes less confusion when talking to Euros) :)
I've gotten so used to writing dates this way that the "standard" American way of writing dates in the jumbled format looks as awkward to me as somebody writing the time "12:30:05" as "30:05:12". - christoast, on 06/09/2009, -7/+40Like Stephen Pinker says, a lot of these rules are arbitrary and stunt creativity.
- nepidae, on 06/09/2009, -15/+44actually
Jane said, "I hate you.", and left.
Jane said, "I hate you," and left.
Jane said," I hate you", and left.
ALL MEAN EXACTLY THE SAME THING. There is 0 ambiguity between them. The reason is we don't actually pronounce punctuation. People who get hung up on this simply are wasting brain cycles that could be use for actual productive things. Either that or they are trolling, which is fine as entertainment, but don't mask it as something else. - irkalla, on 06/09/2009, -11/+40I put all my punctuation inside quotation marks, just because I prefer the way it looks. When put outside it makes the statement look 'broken' to me.
- murrdpirate, on 06/09/2009, -2/+29I hate when you have to quote a question within a sentence that is not supposed to end in a question mark.
- twiztidsinz, on 06/09/2009, -4/+31wat u meen?
- Rantipole, on 06/09/2009, -2/+27Moot point. There won't be any rules left at all by the time the non-geeks of my generation get done with English.
- ayeroxor, on 06/09/2009, -3/+28The above double-punctuation idea is clearly necessary when quoting a question like, "Why?".
- hpodity, on 06/09/2009, -0/+24The reason periods and commas have gone inside quotation marks in the US is because when type was handset on the presses it was a common occurrence for the period and commas to be pushed out of alignment if they were at the end of a sentence or, in some cases, to be damaged and or snapped if they were placed between a quotation mark plate and a blank plate (indicating a space). No, it's not logical to do it that way, which is why the Commonwealth grammar Nazis like myself put our commas and periods in the right (literally) place, instead of following a convention set (haha) by lazy typesetters in colonial America.
- Strenoth, on 06/09/2009, -5/+29Well, maybe this is improper all around, but personally, I'd have written that as
did she say "I want a supreme pizza."?
Period inside at the end of the sentence/line being quoted, question mark at the end of the full question, and the question includes the quoted part. - GamerXR72, on 06/09/2009, -4/+27They are where they belong.
Progress by another name is positive change. This is progress. - rchargel, on 06/09/2009, -1/+24I pipe everything Jane says directly to /dev/null.
- Timbit42, on 06/09/2009, -6/+27Then there should be two periods. One inside, one outside.
- DivineMonkey, on 06/09/2009, -1/+22Tell Jane she can call me.
- Nitrogen, on 06/08/2009, -7/+27This is something I've noticed myself going back and forth on, too. I think ". (punctuation outside the quotes) is more logical, while ." (punctuation inside the quotes) is more elegant looking.
It gets fuzzier if you expand beyond periods and commas (since it sucks to have one rule for periods and commas and another for question marks and exclamation points). How about when you quote a question in a statement? (e.g. Donnie replied, "What now?") A question mark belongs in the quote, while a period would technically belong outside of it. - ThanatosST, on 06/09/2009, -1/+21You read youtube comments? Why would you voluntarily submit yourself to that hell?
- Hellahulla, on 06/09/2009, -0/+18Actually, in British English you put the comma or full stop outside of the quotation mark anyway. Unless that punctuation is part of the text being quoted.
- vizerei, on 06/09/2009, -4/+20Thanks. F**king. God.
Even when first learned that as I kid I thought this was stupid. WHY add something to a quote that does not have anything to do with the content of the quote. The period is part of the containing sentence, not the usually non-sentence element of the quote. - adr3988, on 06/09/2009, -1/+17Because it's a stand of the English language which for the most part is mutually intelligible. Calling it American would imply it was a completely separate and independent language.
- 42Vindictive, on 06/09/2009, -3/+19How in the world do you think 'broken' is a complete sentence?
- vuke69, on 06/09/2009, -1/+17One might even call it logical.
- elnerdo, on 06/09/2009, -0/+16I'm personally most fond of the first one there, because Jane spoke one whole sentence ("I hate you."), and I'm incorporating her sentence as one part of MY sentence, so I just treat it as a word, since it's in quotes.
- Outofthenight, on 06/09/2009, -3/+18@asx1310 - Typical American arrogance. You do realize that the US is the only English speaking nation to ignore logical quoting, right?
"American English" is not representative of the English language, "American English" is the anomaly. - Amadeus2490, on 06/09/2009, -1/+16Actually, I was told that placing punctuation inside of quotation marks was a part of American grammar only, and that people in other English-speaking countries only do this if it's part of the actual quote. I've seen people break this rule in just about every book/novel i've ever read, though.
- emotecontrol, on 06/09/2009, -0/+13Only Americans believe that it is a rule to punctuate inside the quotation marks on every occation. In other places, the location of the punctuation is context-sensitive. In most cases, punctuation only falls inside quotation marks if the punctuation is part of the quoted text, but it's actually quite flexible.
- schwab002, on 06/09/2009, -3/+16That's actually the correct use of the period since your parenthetical clause isn't a complete sentence, although you probably shouldn't be using parentheses there in the first place.
- rhedrick, on 06/09/2009, -3/+15My rule is that my sentence will end with my punctuation. If I quote someone else such that I include their punctuation, their's will be included inside the quotes. My punctuation will follow at the end. I believe quotation marks are to delimit between my sentence and some others' words.
- ileftfark, on 06/09/2009, -3/+15"How do I compile this program?"
"Easy - do: 'cmake .. ' ". - lpcustom, on 06/09/2009, -3/+15I like it, and here's why. If I'm quoting someone's question but I'm making a statement.
He said, "What would you like to drink?"
That sentence doesn't end. The question mark isn't the correct punctuation for my sentence. It is the correct punctuation for the quoted sentence. To me, two punctuations make perfect sense. The sentence structure would be more logical like this.
He said, "What would you like to drink?".
That even looks better to me. It finalizes the sentence and makes the quotation much more clear. We can see that a questions was quoted, and it's within a statement. - CrazyEddie041, on 06/09/2009, -2/+14I think you mean "per se."
Wait, wait, wait, sorry...
It should be "per se". - yuanzhoulu, on 06/09/2009, -3/+14@gregloire
actually "proper" english would do the first style, believe it or not. that's just how idiotic it is.
i completely agree. - ctabone, on 06/09/2009, -0/+10Honestly, I'm really glad that people are discussing this because it's been something that's been pissing me off since I started taking CS classes...
- SACubeMonkey, on 06/09/2009, -0/+10How about when the quote and the sentence are both questions?
Did Donnie reply "What now?"?
My head hurts. - petard, on 06/09/2009, -5/+15It isn't being quoted, so why is it inside the quotes?
- kufu91, on 06/09/2009, -0/+9nope olsonea.
I think you are thinking of when you are quoting two different speakers in dialogue. You start a new paragraph when you switch speakers. - SystemicThought, on 06/09/2009, -2/+11Personally I think that every quotation should either have internal punctuation, or be open ended (only for fragments), but the internal punctuation should not end the sentence.
Take, for example, these sample sentences.
He said, "Chicken?"
He said, "Chicken?"?
Now, the second one looks silly, but I think it's important to clarify in instances of compound questions. In the first example, the person could be asking if the person simply stated "Chicken," (Which we could write: He said, "Chicken."?) or they could be stating that he asked if someone wanted to eat chicken, "Chicken?" (Which we could write: He said, "Chicken?".) Or it could be both, they asked if he asked if someone wanted chicken. In the second sample sentence, though it looks silly, it is clear that the speaker is asking if the subject asked a question. This is the biggest folly with the way we use punctuation in quotation marks, and has the most room for ambiguity. -
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