We’re writing a research report in my English class. My teacher passed back the rough drafts today, and wherever I had said, for example:
"The Book of Kells",
He corrected it to:
"The Book of Kells,"
But I’ve always heard that unless the punctuation mark is part of the quote, you shouldn’t include it. After all, the book’s name isn’t The Book of Kells,!
I asked my teacher and he said the rule was to include the punctuation. I don’t get why. I’ll “fix” it so I don’t get a lower grade, but it doesn’t make much sense to me.
Yes, your teacher is right about the rule. No, it doesn’t make sense. Periods and commas go inside the quotes. Someone a long time ago decided that it looks better that way.
By the way, question marks and exclamation points don’t go inside the quotes unless they belong there. And British English does it the logical way, putting punctuation inside the quotes only when it’s logical to do so.
When I’m writing in a technical sense, I often ignore this rule if the meaning is not clear. For example, go to the first field on the page and enter the text “subscribe”.
If you’re writing something where there are quotations of code, it’s better to have the punctuation on the outside. I do all my writing that way, except when it is to be submitted to something where someone will care.
Only in America do they do it this way, the British put the comma outside the quotes where it belongs. It is a stupid, illogical, misleading, archaic convention kept alive by a handful of pinheads, and it needs to be put to sleep. There is absolutely no reason for it except for the obsolete typesetting concern mentioned by femtosecond. Every technical write I know is aware of the rule but chooses to go with the British convention.
If your teacher is still insistant, just tell him you’re British. Or a technical writer. Or a British technical writer.
An American bucking the trend, here.
I think that if you know the rules, and find the rule is totally stupid, you should ignore it.
Questions like:
Do y’all agree with Dave’s logic that “the system will consider the zip exclusion table into account before returning an arrival date”?
If I put the question mark inside the quotation, it will appear that Dave isn’t sure of himself.
An American bucking the trend, here.
I think that if you know the rules, and find the rule is totally stupid, you should ignore it.
Questions like:
Do y’all agree with Dave’s logic that “the system will consider the zip exclusion table into account before returning an arrival date”?
If I put the question mark inside the quotation, it will appear that Dave isn’t sure of himself.
Wait a minute, if you’d say you’re british, wouldn’t you use ,these quotes’? Or something.
Additionally, you may drive your teacher nuts by mixing “these” ‘these’ “these” „these” ‘these’ and ,these’’.
I fail to see why putting the comma outside the quotes is any more logical than putting it inside. After all in the sentence:
“I was right,” he said.
The comma is not part of the quote in any case (the actual quote would have a period after it, not a comma: “I was right.”). So if the comma itself is arbitrary, why object to it being placed in an arbitrary position?
That’s the rule on questions, which is different from that of statements. Questions are indeed placed in order to indicate whether the sentence quoted is a question or if it’s a statement that the author is writing a question around.
According to The Chicago Manual of Style (which any professional technical writer should be using):
I used to subscribe to the Journal of Technical Writing (or something like that), and the placement of commas and quotes was often debated there. I don’t recall anyone actually liking the American rule, but a lot of people had the attitude that, well, it was the rule after all, and what can we, a bunch of lowly writers, do about it other than comply. Others responded by saying "You pathetic losers! We’re writers for crying out loud. We are the Society of Technical Writers. If we’re not allowed to make the rules who the hell do you think should be? Accountants?” or words to that effect.
Well, I just got through checking out Wikkit’s cite and it gives an excellent example of how the American rule is misleading:
While the punctuation-inside-the-quotes rule may be tolerable in ordinary writing, it can be downright dangerous in technical writing where absolute clarity is the primary goal.
Now, to get to your specific question about why the rule is illogical let’s go back to the OP and the example of
“The Book of Kells”,
vs.
“The Book of Kells,”
With respect to language constructs, “The Book of Kells” is a single entity consisting of four words and only those four words. To put the comma inside the quotes would logically imply that the comma was part of the book’s name. In fact, the comma has nothing to do with the book, but it does have something to do with the sentence as a whole, therefore it should not (logically) be made to appear as though it is part of the book’s name.
Here’s one more quote from Wikkit’s cite:
**
Actually most of the rules of grammer follow some sort of logic. The rule against double negatives is based on the illogic of saying “I don’t have no money” when you really mean to indicate that “my money = 0”.
