Dude?
Place the period inside the quotation mark, if you please.
Only if you’re American. The Brits have started putting punctuation outside of the quotation marks these days.
“This is where I come in?”
-or-
“This is the point within the production that cues my entry onto the stage so as to facilitate furtherance of the given circumstances?”
I’d have to smack ya.
Dude is where my car?
I’m with Jackmanii on this one. Gratuitous apostrophization should be punishable by law. I just saw a sign on a hair salon yesterday that said “Haircut’s”.
AARGH!
Friedo I usually agree with you but I’ve just checked all my recent Brit publications and I can’t find a single place where that is done and besdes it is WRONG, wrong, wrong. Nobody does that in a civilised world.
Don’t make me cry and tell me that they do. If you’ve got a cite I’m really interested because I can then annoy my tutor with it. I’ve already found a definition for a gerundive phrase when she was unable to make it clear.
Studi might actually have a point. “Something I can’t stand is when people use bad grammar,” is definetly awkward, and could be more clearly phrased, “I can’t stand it when people use bad grammar.” However, there are exceptions to this, usually involving “this.” “This is where Wellington defeated Napoleon,” “This is when I come on.” I suppose context also changes it: “Disney is building a new theme park in Waterloo. Waterloo is where Wellington defeated Napoleon.” That being said, this is the first time I’ve ever really though about that particular construction, and I’m the sort of person who is actually believes that knowing the difference between “its” and “it’s” sets me above the rest of humanity. In other words, this is a pretty minor grammar infraction. This is also certainly not the most common grammatical error. That honor is reserved for the various trauma routinely dealt out to the everyday comma
I have your car.
I have all cars.
All your cars are belong to me.
But I will sell them back to you for LOW! LOW! prices! Some money down and MORE MONEY EVERY MONTH!
IF I CAN’T SELL IT, YOU CAN’T BUY IT!
“How can you afford to sell SO MANY CARS?” I hear you ask!
Well, friend, it’s because I’ve got LOW! LOW! overhead and because I’m a little CRRRRRRAaaaazy! That’s why they call me Crazy Fenris! If I can’t sell you a car, I WON’T! What could be nuttier than that!?
So c’mon down to Crazy Fenris’s Used and Found Car Lot! Bring the kids, we’ll toss 'em on the bar-b-que!
Free lemon scented fingerbowls for the first 5000 people who bring their children!
All this and MUCH, MUCH MORE!
at
Crazy Fenris’s MONDO Used Car Lot!
SALE! SALE! SALE!
[sub]Offeronlygoodincertainstates.
Sometermsandconditionsmayapply.
Iftheydotheyapplytoyoubutnotme.
Lookitthis!ImwritinglikeSweetSueorwhateverhernameis!
Allyourtermsandconditionsarebelongtometoo![/sub]
“I’m the sort of person who is actually believes”
Fuck. Always in the grammar rants.
The preceeding was a simulated unpaid commercial hijack. The poster who did it is soley responsible for it’s contents. The views expressed therein do not necesiarily reflect those of the managment or ownership of this board.
Had this been an actual paid commercial hijack, you would have been instructed where to tune in your area for further announcements and developements. We now return you to your regularly scheduled pit-thread.
This message will self destruct in three posts
Uh, you got it wrong. Try “The mo’st common grammatical…”
[sub][sup]WOO-HOOOO!!![/sup][/sub]
Really . . . in my many years of living not only with an English major but with a copyeditor, that was never brought to my attention. Could you perhaps provide a citation for this rule?
“Everyday, I hear such phrases being used on national news, in press meetings by heads of state, and from other people who you think would know simple grammar.”
Oh, please. Our own president seems not to know the female version of “he” is not “her”
“To me, it stands out as much as someone saying “I were sleeping” or something absolutely ridiculous.”
But “I were sleeping” is not ridiculous when it is part of a subjunctive phrase, such as “If I were sleeping”. And I fail to see how “is where” is comparable to “I were sleeping”. Could you show how that’s the case as well? Thanks:)
“How can people for whom English is a first language not know simple grammaratical rules?”
Bolding mine. Um, maybe you should go learn the proper adjective form of “grammar” before you go mocking others’ English:) Upon preview, I see you attribute this to not spelling the word properly. I would posit to you (in a friendly way, of course) that perhaps you didn’t misspell it but put it in the wrong form.
Or mebe you’re channeling GWB:)
And of course, it never fails … in any thread on any message board on any server in any country … SOMEone involved in correcting another’s grammar will spell it “grammer.” (Or if you prefer, “grammer”.)
Well now, Primaflora, as one Ozlander to another, I have to correct you. See this from Gowers’ estimable and very British The Complete Plain Words:
*…if you are giving only a partial quotation or merely citing expressions as examples, put the full stop outside, as in this sentence … :
There must be hyphens in ‘the balance-of-payment difficulties’ but not in ‘the difficulties are over the balance of payments’.*
He says much more in support of this practice, too. Gowers is not current? Well, how about the following from The New Fowlers Modern English Usage, 3rd edition, 1996 (pp. 646-7):
All signs of punctuation used with words in quotation marks must be placed according to the sense. If an extract ends with a point or exclamation or interrogation sign, let that point be included before the closing quotation mark; but not otherwise.
There follow many codicils and amendments. Among the examples given are these, relevant to our present purpose:
Our subject is the age of Latin literature known as ‘silver’.
We need not ‘follow a multitude to do evil’.
Note also the distinction made between American and British (specifically OUP-Hart’s-Rules) practice:
The most significant difference of practice is that in the types [like that just shown] American publishers would normally place the final quotation mark outside *the full point:
We need not ‘follow a multitude to do evil.’*
Note also the following recommended usage from Australia’s own AGPS Style Manual (in accord with British practice):
The girl said, ‘I wish you would keep quiet’, but her brother took no notice.
So, what do I make of all this? I generally favour British practice as a matter of policy; but beyond that, I increasingly find myself preferring and suggesting to others that they should prefer the use of italics, rather than quotation marks, wherever they can be used with an appearance of propriety and elegance, and without introducing confusion. So I prefer this, for example:
Successfulness has four s sounds in it, but five instances of the letter s, remembering the s sound given to the second c.
to this:
‘Successfulness’ has four ‘s’ sounds in it, but five instances of the letter ‘s’, remembering the ‘s’ sound given to the second ‘c’.
And I cannot accept that the American version of the latter would be at all elegant:
‘Successfulness’ has four ‘s’ sounds in it, but five instances of the letter ‘s,’ remembering the ‘s’ sound given to the second ‘c.’
Another benefit of italics is that they provide a further option when we are confronted with the awkwardness occasioned by double and single quotation marks. But don’t get me started on that vexed question!
Well now, Primaflora, I can help with this also. Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (huge and invaluable, even though it is American!) has almost a whole page devoted to this question. I have the 1989 edition, and refer to it often when other sources yield nothing. Let me summarise:
Many authorities have deprecated is when and is where constructions. But we should distinguish harmless cases like Another exception is when you are writing for a specific market and cases in which a definition is attempted, like What is humor? Humor is when you laugh. Definitions of this form were common in the 18th century, even among grammarians. Example: A Solecism is when the rules of Syntax are transgressed. (Alexander Adam, 1772, Latin and English Grammar); but they are very hard to find in modern writing. General recommendation: Whatever you do in speech, be aware that most careful writers nowadays avoid this form for definitions, and you would be well advised to adopt the same cautious attitude.
The article (headed when, where) is much more detailed than this, and I recommend it to all concerned. A main authority cited in Webster’s is Margaret Bryant’s Current American Usage (NY, 1962); she can’t stand is when.
This is where I sit ---->
I would say something enlightening in this thread… but if I were to do that, I’d need to know something useful.
This is something I used to get routinely marked against in papers in college. It simply makes much more intuitive sense to me.
And on that date, did you hear the defendant say, “I’m going to kill you?”
…makes so very much less sense than
And on that date, did you hear the defendant say, “I’m going to kill you!”?
The overall sentence is referencing a string object; the end punctuation belongs to the overall sentence, not the contained string.
The many American grammarians who disagree with that can bite me.
But don’t get me wrong, I will never in this lifetime spell “center” as “centre”. That just looks dumb.
I still think that “where …”, “when …”, and “how …” introduce adverbial clauses which can reasonably be promoted to noun clauses under the right circumstances. “where the car is parked” is an adverbial clause in English, but just as “here” can seem to be a noun (“You are here.”) so can an adverbial phrase.
For the record, period and comma always go inside the quotation mark; other punctuation goes outside the quotation mark unless part of the quoted text, in which case it goes inside. If you want to end a sentence with a quote that does not end in a period, question mark, or exclamation mark, you must add an ellipsis to the quotation and end the quotation with an period (or other appropriate mark).
For the record, KellyM, please tell us: is this just a statement of your own preferred practice, or an attempt at stating standard USA practice? It certainly does not represent British or Australian practice, for the record! I think even some American authorities would object to your principle as an infallible guide. For example, the US Government Printing Office (in A Manual of Style, NY, 1986) finds a category of exceptions:
*8.145 [p. 132] In congressional and certain other classes of work showing amendments, and in courtwork with quoted language, punctuation marks are printed after the quotation marks when not a part of the quoted matter.
[One example from the three given:]
Insert the words “growth”, “production”, and “manufacture”.
*
Elsewhere, and in accord with your proposed rule, we find the following example (at 8.48; p. 122):
Items marked “A,” “B,” and “C,” inclusive, were listed.
From this, let me say, I recoil in fright. But that’s American English, and you’re entitled to do things that way if you like. Just don’t impose it on the rest of the world - along with the execrable and almost ubiquitous practice of using endnotes in preference to footnotes (and this just as it becomes trivially easy for anyone at all to do footnotes correctly, given any standard wordprocessor).