Grammar Questions ".

Factual Questions
1

More and more I am seeing end-of-sentence periods outside of closing quotation marks, as in

Josh said, “I want to go home”.

Now, my learnin’ would say absolutely not, no way, never is this correct. (I do know the situation is contextual with a “?”).

Have the rules changed on this, or do people just do it out of ignorance?

How about this one: Almost every thing I read these days only has one space between sentences, whereas I was always taught to put two spaces after sentence-ending punctuation. In fact, this very board automatically changes my double spaces to single spaces.

It is a pain to insert spaces whenever I copy/paste on-line text into a Word document; but I do this meticulously. I would never submit a report or other document with only single spaces between sentences.

Am I a dinosaur?

2

In American English, the standard is to always put the periods inside the quotation mark. I too am seeing it more and more the other way; it is supposedly becoming more acceptable to follow the British system and put the period outside the quotation mark. Also, I’ve been told that one reason the British way is getting more commonplace has to do with writing code - whatever is inside the marks is part of the code, so code-writers have to put the period on the outside. And of course, some people put the marks on the outside because they never learned the standard rules. Even though I find it very annoying, I guess it’s no big deal, although I think anyone writing anything for publication and formal business or education purposes should definitely follow the standard; and I would absolutely kick back anything I received for editing if it did not adhere to the MLA style.

I also hate the one-space-after-a-period style! It drives me batty. When I wrote our company brochure, I had to specifically request that the typesetters stop changing my two spaces to one. You see this a lot in printed media; I think it’s a publishing thing that has migrated to the electronic media.

3

There seem to be certain times when “. is allowable–it’s one of those things that you do very rarely. Usually it is a case of quoting someone whose quote ends with a different punctuation mark, so you end up with something like ?”.

As to single spaces between words, that’s absolutely standard in actual print. The reason one places two spaces between the words when typing one’s ms is that the typesetter must be able to easily tell where the sentence changes are. A comma looks an awful lot like a period; adding an extra space after the period allows the typesetter to easily distinguish between where there should be a comma, and where a period. This is also the rationale for placing two spaces after a colon. Basically, if the typesetter, in her frantic rush to finish the job (and they often have phenomenally tight deadlines), sees two spaces, she can quickly insert the punctuation with no tail (period, colon); if she sees one space, she inserts a tailed punctuation mark (comma, semicolon).

LL

4

Regarding Question 1:
**

divemaster, you are on the money on this one; a period belongs inside quotation marks every time. But, as specified, a question mark behaves differently. A question mark is sometime placed outside the quotation marks, only when the quotation is the subject or object of the question and not a question itself. For example:
[ul]
[li]sdimbert said, “Periods go inside quotation marks.”[/li][li]Did divemaster ask, “What about question marks?”[/li][li]No, divemaster did not ask, “What about question marks?” [sub]implied period here[/sub] sdimbert brought them up because missbunny mentioned them.[/li][/ul]

Regarding Question 2:
**

In a word, yes.

You see, thanks to pioneers like Blaise Pascal and Bill Gates, computer software is now smart enough to handle different fonts.

Try the following experiment:
[list=1]
[li]Open a new Word document.[/li][li]Type the same sentence two times (or, if you’re a whiz, type it once then copy & paste it).[/li][li]Select the first version and make it 12pt Times New Roman.[/li][li]Select the second and make it one of those funky script fonts, also 12pt.[/li][/list=1]

If all goes well, the two lines of text should be different lengths even though both are the same size text. This is because Times is a monospaced font (every letter is the same width) while the other is not.

In a monospaced font, every letter from big, ol’ Capital “W” to little lower-case “i” is alloted the same amount of horizontal space on the line, like on a typewriter. But, with the advent of fancier fonts, computers became smart enough to adjust that horizontal space automatically.

So, to make a long story short (too late!) when typing on a typewriter, one should place two blank spaces after a period. But, a computer is smart enough to note that a period marks the end of a sentence, so you need type only one blank space - the PC will take care of the rest.

As a matter of fact, if you type two blank spaces, your text will look… somehow… wrong to the digitalitterati out there who are smarmy enough to be offended by such things.

5

Double spaces after a period are OK in a typed manuscript, but any publisher–certainly since I’ve been involved with publishing–will universally replace them with single spaces for publication.

I had the double spaces ingrained in the typing classes of my youth, as you did, but we live in a different world now. The double space as an artifact of the typesetter’s time is just that: an artifact. It was made necessary not by rules of grammar or by ancient linguistic tradition, but by the physical limitation of the movable type era. This obviously no longer obtains, so we can now do away with it.

It took me a couple years to get used to it too, but now when I’m editing a manuscript that has double spaces after a sentence, I see it as archaic and inelegant; it’s certainly unnecessary. The first thing I do when I receive a manuscript electronically is to do a universal search and replace to remove all double spaces.

I urge you to lay this battle aside: it’s no longer justified, and trust me, it’s unwinnable.

6

I’m relatively certain this is not true; at least it’s never been true with any version of Times New Roman I’ve ever had. There are monospaced fonts out there still, of course, but they are far and away the exception; TNR tends to be the rule.

The difference in line length is due to the fact that each letter in a (non-monspaced) font is a separate graphic element, with no rigid dictates as to its width. With today’s digital technology a font designer is free to make each letter any size they want (withing reason, usually).

7

Missbunny, please, please tell me you were joking when you told your typesetter to use two spaces between sentences. If not, I can assure you there was much behind-your-back eyerolling and chuckles at the design studio that day.

lissener: sdimbert probably meant Currier, not TNR, when referring to a monospaced font.

8

As a person who often submits manuscripts for publication, I can tell you that placing two spaces in the manuscript is not only useful, but necessary, rather than archaic and inelegant.

Manuscripts submitted to editors are in Courier New, 12 pt, double spaced, with two spaces between sentences, two spaces after colons, five spaces of indent beginning each paragraph, and no orphan/widow correction.

Editors are accustomed to reading those extra spaces. Typesetters are accustomed to it as well (see my earlier post). The reailty is that so few of the places to which I submit accept electronic submissions that the point becomes moot: it’s on paper, therefore you double space between sentences.

If I send an ms to Gardner Dozois (editor of Asimov’s SF) with single spaces between sentences, I will guarantee you that barring any but my most spectacular writing, it’ll come back to me with a form one.

LL

9

stuyguy, no, I was not joking. I am sure they were laughing at me - but I had seen previous versions of our brochure, done by the same design studio, in which the sentences were so close together they were practically unreadable. It was very hard to tell - much more so than in other publications I see - where one sentence ended and the next one began. That’s why I told them to put two spaces. I’m sure I was their big “idiot client” for that day. But our brochure really does look much better my way.

Re periods after sentences that end with a question mark: The question mark supercedes a following period. If the quotation itself ends with a question mark, you don’t put a period in addition outside the mark:

Do this: John said, “Are you going to the store?”
Not this: John said, “Are you going to the store?”.

10

*divemaster: In fact, this very board automatically changes my double spaces to single spaces. *

Actually, it’s probably your browser doing it. Excessive white space - tabs, spaces, carriage returns - are just turned into single spaces in HTML. Now, this software will keep carriage returns, but will consolidate spaces: E.g.:

There is only one space | | between these up bars.
There are two spaces | | between these up bars.
There are 3 spaces | | between these up bars.
There are 4 spaces | | between these up bars.
There are 5 spaces | | between these up bars.
There are 6 spaces | | between these up bars.
There are 7 spaces | | between these up bars.
There are 8 spaces | | between these up bars.
There are 9 spaces | | between these up bars.
There are 10 spaces | | between these up bars.

11

The rules haven’t changed completely, but the usage you describe is becoming more common in the US (it’s always been standard in the UK), mainly because (IMHO) it’s more precise for technical writing (particularly software documentation). If you’re quoting text to be typed by a user as input to a program, you don’t want any ambiguity about whether the period should be typed or not. Thus, in documentation, it’s become standard to include in quotes only the exact text being quoted. Some writers who do a lot of this type of writing (myself included) have adopted this style in general, on the grounds that it’s better to use one style or the other consistently than to shift back and forth.

You’re a dinosaur <grin>. The convention of double spaces between sentences is one that only ever applied to typewritten documents. You’ll note that you don’t see (and never have) double spaces between sentences in books. Typesetters hate the double spaces and, as it became more common for documents to be entered in a word processor and then imported into typesetting systems, began discouraging double spaces, so that now you usually only see them among writers who learned to type in the pre-word-processing era and who’ve had limited exposure to graphic designers and typesetters and use of desktop publishing programs to prepare printed material.

Neither of these, strictly speaking, is a grammar question; they’re issues of style in punctuation, and thus are much more susceptible to changing conventions. Grammar tends to be much more resistant to change.

12

(continuing last post)
but the spaces themselves are preserved in the database, as noted when I quote my last post:


There is only one space | | between these up bars.
There are two spaces |  | between these up bars.
There are 3 spaces |   | between these up bars.
There are 4 spaces |    | between these up bars.
There are 5 spaces |     | between these up bars.
There are 6 spaces |      | between these up bars.
There are 7 spaces |       | between these up bars.
There are 8 spaces |        | between these up bars.
There are 9 spaces |         | between these up bars.
There are 10 spaces |          | between these up bars.
13

I meant to suggest only that replacing double spaces with single is an inevitable step in a document’s transition from ms. to published, not that double spaces had no place in the ms. And you yourself pointed out that you submit hard copies, where my reference was only and specifically to electronic submissions.

14

Missbunny, that clostrophobic look you describe is better solved by increasing the tracking (aka letterspacing) of the entire text, not the insertion of an extra space. The old brochure was probably a victim of one of two common, misguided practices: 1. an overzealous attempt to cram everything into a too-small space by minimizing the letterspacing, or 2. an effort to follow the 70’s design fad of very, very tight letterspacing.

Old school purists like myself are offended by another typesetting abomination that has yet to be mentioned here or elsewhere – namely the use of what are technically ditto marks (these things: ") instead of real, “curly” open- and closed- quotation marks (those shaped like 6s and 9s).

Thank goodness these “dumb quotes” are automatically replaced in some of the better word processing programs if the program can recognize the word construction. I half forgive (but NEVER not notice) the use of “dumb quotes” in correspondence and personal notes; but when I see it on huge billboards or in zillion-dollar glossy magazine ads, my heart skips a beat. Was the ad agency/typehouse so lazy or ignorant that they did not know the difference between real and “dumb” quote marks?

15

I can’t lay this battle aside. My agency has very specific rules for the documents we prepare. Including font = TNR 13 pt. and double spacing between sentences. There are many more of course.

Our documents are circulated nationwide in hard copy, and also submitted electronically for inclusion in the Federal Register, which is printed on paper as well as on-line.

I am really enjoying the facts and debate on this topic. Thanks.

16

FWIW, this is how I do it.

If I am making a direct quote, I put the period inside the quotation mark. For example: Frieda said, “There are bats in my hair.”

If I am not making a direct quote, or using a colloquialism, I put the period outside of the quotation mark. For example: Some people call me “crazy”.

I also put two spaces after sentence-ending punctuation.

17

Lissener wrote:

“I urge you to lay this battle aside: it’s no longer justified…”

Yuk, yuk. All us type types (hmm…) are chuckling at your pun. Did you do it on purpose?

18

FWIW, you’re doing it wrong. :smiley:

19

Ah. I misunderstood. :slight_smile: Yes, replacing the doubles with singles before publication is inevitable, and usual, and has been for longer than I’ve been alive. :slight_smile:

I have to admit I do use double spaces in basically everything, because it’s habit: you get accustomed to just hitting the space bar twice. You don’t see it here on the SDMB, but in personal email correspondence (which I will not send in anything other than plain text) I double space. I’m a dinosaur, perhaps, at 22. :smiley:

LL

20

Thought of it as it appeared on the screen; wondered who else would have their mind in the gutter.

And styguy, my heart knows that beat well. My problem with the auto-curling of most of today’s word processing programs, however, is that it has contributed to the near extinction of the initial apostrophe: the ’ in front of **’**99 is an apostrophe, not a single quote, and should be curled like a closing quote, not an opening one. But the software doesn’t distinguish, so I get to have little, private moments of pointless rage a hundred times a day. I’m just appalled at the level of professional publications in which this error is overlooked; ditto your ditto reference.