# more punctuation questions
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [January 14, 2000, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828 "2000-01-14T19:07:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2000, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/1 "2000-01-15T06:01:00Z")
In formal writing, does the smiley go before the period, or after? :o I usually put it after, but I’m just not sure. Does it matter if the last puctuation is a period, question mark, or exclamation mark?
If you’re quoting someone, does the smiley go inside the trailing quote, or outside? Does it depend on whether it’s their smiley or yours?
## I looked in my writing guide, but it doesn’t say one way or the other. 😕
_It is too clear, and so it is hard to see._
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### Author:  [@pldennison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pldennison)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2000, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/2 "2000-01-15T06:03:00Z")
The mind boggles at the concept of the smileys going _anywhere_ in “formal writing.”
I can see it now, from Herman Melville:
> [@](#):
>
> . . . from Hell’s heart, I stab at thee; for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee! \> ☹
* * *
“It’s my considered opinion you’re all a bunch of sissies!”–Paul’s Grandfather
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### Author:  [@Drain\_Bead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drain_Bead)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2000, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/3 "2000-01-15T06:13:00Z")
> [@](#):
>
> **William Shakespeare - Sonnet 18**
>
> Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? 🆒
> Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
> Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
> And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: ☹
> Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, :mad:
> And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
> And every fair from fair sometime declines,
> By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
> But thy eternal summer shall not fade, 🙂
> Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
> Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
> When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
> So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, :eek:
> So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 😃
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### Author:  [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2000, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/4 "2000-01-15T06:13:00Z")
**pldennison** , that’s a **great** idea!
LADY MACBETH.
Out, damned spot! Out, I say :mad:! One- two -why then 'tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie :mad:! A soldier, and afeard :rolleyes:? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call
our power to account 😕? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him :(?
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### Author:  [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2000, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/5 "2000-01-15T06:14:00Z")
Damn simulpost. Drain Bead beat me to it.
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### Author:  [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2000, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/6 "2000-01-15T06:18:00Z")
From a copy editor’s standpoint, the smiley would be considered a part of the sentence and should go within the quotemarks or the end-punctuation.
From an art director’s standpoint, though, they often LOOK better when outside.
Has anyone written to William Safire about this?
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### Author:  [@Drain\_Bead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drain_Bead)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2000, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/7 "2000-01-15T06:20:00Z")
That’s okay, I sense this thread will grow to Guy Stuff proportions in our butchery of the classics!
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### Author:  [@pluto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pluto)
#### Post date: [January 14, 2000, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/8 "2000-01-14T19:07:00Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Originally posted by Drain Bead:
> **That’s okay, I sense this thread will grow to Guy Stuff proportions in our butchery of the classics!**
That assumes we know any classics!
\*And the raven, never flitting, :eek:
Still is sitting, still is sitting :eek:
On the pallid bust of Pallas :eek:
Just above my chamber door! :eek: \*
* * *
“To do her justice, I can’t see that she could have found anything nastier to say if she’d thought it out with both hands for a fortnight.”
Dorothy L. Sayers
_Busman’s Honeymoon_
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### Author:  [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)
#### Post date: [January 14, 2000, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/9 "2000-01-14T20:51:00Z")
Why, I can smile :), and murder whiles I smile :eek:,
And cry ‘Content’ 🆒 to that which grieves my heart ☹ ,
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears ☹ ,
And frame my face to all occasions. 🙂 ☹ :o 😃
I’ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall :rolleyes:;
I’ll slay more gazers than the basilisk :mad:;
I’ll play the orator as well as Nestor 🆒,
Deceive more slily than Ulysses could ;),
And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.
I can add colours to the chameleon :eek: :mad: 😃🆒 :),
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages 😕,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school :mad:.
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown 😕?
Tut, were it farther off, I’ll pluck it down :p.
– _3 Henry VI_
* * *
\\| |/
=== '\>
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### Author:  [@moriah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moriah)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2000, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/10 "2000-01-15T07:06:00Z")
I never saw a Purple Cow :eek:
I never hope to see one; 🆒
But I can tell you anyhow, :rolleyes:
I’d rather see than be one. 😛
– The Purple Cow, Frank Gelett Burgess 😕
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### Author:  [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2000, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/11 "2000-01-15T07:15:00Z")
This is just personal preference, but I usually skip the period entirely if I’m ending a sentence with a smiley.
Smileys go after ?s and !s, though.
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### Author:  [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2000, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/12 "2000-01-15T16:13:00Z")
I like (_) (_) & (.) (.) are also excellent:
Two hands upon the breast (_) (_),
Two hands upon the breast (_) (_), and labour is past.–Russian Proverb.
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### Author:  [@Catrandom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catrandom)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2000, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/13 "2000-01-15T17:44:00Z")
I’m a magazine editor, and I now have authors giving me manuscripts with smilies in them. The language, if not the world, is coming to an end.
If you must smilie, put 'em before ending punctuation and inside quotation marks, says I. Smilies are not a substitute for ending punctuation :P.
Catrandom The Editrix
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### Author:  [@Catrandom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catrandom)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2000, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/14 "2000-01-15T17:45:00Z")
Seems to me that used to work 😛
Catrandom
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### Author:  [@techchick68](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/techchick68)
#### Post date: [January 15, 2000, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/15 "2000-01-15T20:20:00Z")
There once was a man from Nantucket, 😃
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### Author:  [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)
#### Post date: [January 17, 2000, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/16 "2000-01-17T22:12:00Z")
Well I put them after the punctuation. Separated by a space, because otherwise the period get’s tangled up in the picture if you’re posting somewhere without this sophisticated smiley makers. Outside the ending punctuation - I don’t consider the smiley text, so it doesn’t need punctuation itself.
But then I have never liked the rule on ending punctuation for quotes and parentheses. If the punctuation is part of the quoted material, I insert before the close quote. If the quote is just around a phrase or word, though, the punctuation goes outside.
Ex.
“The quick, brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.”
Someone just called me a “nincompoop”.
(Go jump off a bridge.) That’s fun (really).
See the smiley. 😉 This one. ;^)
FYI, the reason periods (and thus other punctuation) is supposed to always go inside the quote comes from the early days of the printing press. They were worried about that trailing period getting worn out or broken off by extending on the edge, so they made the rule to enclose it with the quote, even when it wasn’t part of the quoted material.
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [January 17, 2000, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/17 "2000-01-17T23:44:00Z")
So you’re saying that, before the printing press came into common use, ending periods went outside quotation marks if they weren’t part of the quoted material?
Do you have any pointers to any pictures of pre-Gutenberg documents that support this?
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### Author:  [@tenspeedjohn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tenspeedjohn)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2000, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-punctuation-questions/12828/18 "2000-01-18T00:03:00Z")
Sorry, left my pre-Gutenberg documents in my other jacket.
Smilies disabled.
* * *
Not so fast, you mucko!