Man, and I was so impressed with my self-control: I was gonna reply with this mythbuster.
FYI, your professor is wrong and should get his facts straight. YMMV.
In all fairness to iampunha, he doesn’t have a prof stating such. He said he’d check with him/her first. Regardless, to use e.e. as the default is wrong.
In the U. S. of A., periods always go inside quotation marks. Never seen it done any other way.
… and then the duck answered, “It started out as a wart on my ass!”
man, no one asked about fubar…
In standard American style, the period goes inside the quotation marks. British
English tends to put it outside. Ditto the comma. Both styles, however, put question marks, exclamation points, and dashes after the close quote unless the punctuation is part of the quoted text.
Regarding the “Oxford comma,” there was a fashion for many years to omit it. No one knows where this bizarre practice originated. Sanity is gradually returning, though, and it’s finding its place more and more: its inclusion is pretty much standard nowadays. As the recent 15th ed. of the Chicago Manual of Style puts it (paraphrasing), “It often adds clarity and it is never wrong.” So when in doubt, don’t leave it out.
So I see. I looked it up, and apparently periods and commas do always go inside the quotation marks. Apparently the rule is completely arbitrary, based on what pieces of type were available to printers, back when they used movable type. And the rule doesn’t seem to apply to other punctuation marks. It also isn’t done that way in England. Wow, is that ever stupid. :rolleyes:
Blowero, ALL rules of English grammar are arbitrary. MANY of them are based on factors that no longer exist.
You’re right; sorry.
Profuse apologies to Mrs. Cummings.
As a non-native speaker, I can only support this plea for “correct” typing: Whenever I read too many mis-spelled (sp?) words, I tend to repeat those mistakes. So being somewhat egoistical, I would like everyone to use proper typing, in order to improve my own writing.
Ironically - and Deadlyaccurate may even remember this, as she was reading / posting there at the time as well - I was blasted for this very request on a messageboard that specifically dealt with novels and writing in a particular fantasy setting. They closed the whole board down though.
Other than my above mentioned agenda, I’m of the opinion that using “ne1”, “nething”, “ur”, “gr8” and other garbled words - those aren’t even real abbreviations or acronyms, but rather phonetic fill-ins - makes the poster look stupid. Slipping here and there and making the occasional typo is ok in my book, but deliberate use of “words” that aren’t English or acronyms goes too far. This is, as usual, imho and ymmv.
We had a long debate about the serial comma once (I’m too lazy to dig that out, sorry) and someone came up with a clever use of an apposition (iirc), which was right in the place of where the serial comma is supposed to be.
So, in such a case the serial comma - I’m assuming from the title that the “Oxford comma” and the “serial comma” are the same thing - would actually be “wrong” or at least confusing. Since there is a good reason not to use it in German and that’s my native tongue, I have the policy of applying the comma rules I learnt for German to English as well. But of course that’s not an official rule, just my own laziness 
From http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-oxf1.htm
Strunk and White insist that the punctuation must always be within the quotes, even if it is not a part of the actual quote, as with that quote’s concluding period. This is nonsensical. There are times, especially in technical writing, when clarity is reduced by following this rule and if clarity is compromised a rule must be disregarded!
When come bring periods
In the run-on sentence, that comma really isn’t optional, for two reasons:
- The rule about when you can omit the comma is, as my writing prof taught me, “When a conjunction joins two independent clauses, the conjunction must be proceeded by a comma, unless the independent clauses are really really short.” I do not believe the independent clauses in question qualify as “really really short” under the 17th International Symposium on Clause Length.
- Given that the run-on sentence was discussing people who care about minor gaffes, I was legally obligated to nitpick some minor gaffe in the sentence.
- Bugger off, Opal. This is just a concurrence with folks who pointed out that, in American English, the punctuation almost always (and often stupidly) goes inside the quotation “marks.”
Daniel
Same here, but I have some good reasons to suspect it could be true.
OTOH, given the number of posts I wrote during the last weeks, half the threads would be dedicaced to teaching me proper english.
Daniel, the comma in that instance was stylistically optional. In formal business correspondence I’d have red-pencilled it in; anything the other side of formality I’d’ve left it as is. Nothing in English grammar has more nebulous rules than the comma, and within certain minimal parameters comma usage is more open to personal (or editorial) style than pretty much any other aspect of English–with the possible exception of the em dash.
I think anyone who spells the plural of Iraqi with an apostrophe should be prohibited from discussing the war in Iraq. If you spell “Iraqi’s”, you obviously don’t know the first thing about Iraqis (the first thing being what they are called) and have no authority to say what they want, need, deserve, what they’re problem is, etc.
What about those of us who are considering a specific Iraqi’s opinion on spelling and punctuation?
Tris
Well, since nobody responded to my Q-tip question, I’ll try another:
If you find a little sore at the border of your pubic hair region, should you
A) just ignore it and hope it’ll get better all by itself
B) point it out to your girlfriend/boyfriend in an accusatory tone of voice
C) try to hide it from your girlfriend/boyfriend and hope they don’t ask why you’re wearing a mini band-aid at the border of your pubic hair region
D) scab-farm it until it looks like you dropped a slice of pepperoni on the border of your pubic hair region
E) point it out to your priest/shrink/parole officer in an accusatory tone of voice
?