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This may be a YART. If it is point me in the right direction and I'll look it up. I know that when you have a sentence that end in quotation marks the final punctuation must be before the final quotation mark...
Mary saw a spider and yelled, "eeek, why is that spider out of the house?"
But what are the rules when the quotation marks are used to stress a word or expression. Is the punctuation in, or out?
Mary knew she had no chance of dating the handsome Emelio because her friends said he was a little "light in the loafers".
or
...said he was a little "light in the loafers."
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I believe the basic seense of the rule is that if the quoted matter is a phrase or less -- not a sentence -- it does not merit its own period; hence the final period goes outside the quotation marks.
Thus: Her friends said he was a little "light in the loafers".
-but: Her friends said, "He was a little light in the loafers."
With a bit of LIU, I'm sure someone will provide the exact rule.
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Carpal Tunnel
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And I would be too puzzled by meaning of "light in the loafers" to think about punctuation.
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Follow up: The funkandwagnalls site is not responding. From one of my "bricks & mortar" sources (1963):
In American usage printers usually place a period or comma inside closing quotation marks whether it belongs logically to the quoted matter or to the whole sentence or context. <The package is labeled "Handle with Care."> [further example]
But when a logical or exact distinction is desired in specialized work in which clarity is more important than usual, a period or comma can be placed outside quotation marks when it belongs not to the quoted matter but to a large unit containing the quoted matter. <The package is labeled "Handle with Care".> <The Prime Minister, after reporting the negotations, declared resolutely, "Our only course is to resist aggression".> < Replying with the one word "Bunk", he subsided.>
[I question whether the next-to-last example is correct.]
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enthusiast
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Any "rules" found codified somewhere are bunk if they aren't logical, and printers' efforts to impose bad rules should be resisted.
As much as possible, punctuation should be attached to where it logically goes.
As a simplification, you can omit a full stop next to another punctuation mark.
If the quoted chunk is Why is that spider there? then its question mark belongs to it and should be inside its quotation marks.
If the quoting chunk is When did Mary ask (that)? then it too has a question mark, and if (that) is replaced by actual quoted words, its question mark should keep its relative position. Thus:
(a) When did Mary ask "Why is that spider there?"?
The same principle should apply regardless of the punctuation mark, so logically:
(b) When did Mary say "Look at that spider there."?
(c) It was Mary who asked "Why is that spider there?".
It is an allowable simplification to omit the full stop in (b) and (c), but I should regard this as optional, and depending on the bloody-mindedness of my mood I could well insist on keeping them.
Another concession to common printers' usage is the illogical and unnecessary comma introducing quoted matter:
(d) It was Mary who asked, "Why is that spider there?".
I don't like this at all, but in some of my writing, in moments of cravenness (or unusual contentedness) I defer to the convention because it's easier not to think about how to do it correctly.
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According to David Crystal's Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language the period inside the quotes convention was due to a physical limitation of the line of type. The period would get broken off or something like that were it outside the quotes. The comma before the quoted material may seem extraneous to some; I have tried it both ways and leaving it out looks a little empty to me.
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seconding (i think) what other have said-- find a style you like, one that makes sense to you.. follow it.
i had a term paper torn to shreads by a not native speaker of english-- for puctuation.. i brought in my style book (the economist style book, acutally) showed i had followed a consistant form, and since he acutally read the economist, he re-marked the paper.. by grade went from c+ to A. (mind you, in college, i wrote, and rewrote, and rewrote again to get it right..)
A consistant clear style-- one you copy or devise for your self -- works. the economist style is very different fromt the NYTimes.. but both are very readable.
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It is an allowable simplification to omit the full stop in (b) and (c), but I should regard this as optional, and depending on the bloody-mindedness of my mood I could well insist on keeping them.
I agree with your general premise about the logical connotation of punctuation, Nicholas, but I cannot agree with this example. I would lean further towards saying we should always omit a stop whenever a double stop is separated only by speech marks – and the logic is that the speaker being quoted did not actually say the punctuation being offered. So my version of (b) would always be:
(b) When did Mary say "Look at that spider there"?
It seems to me that the role of the question mark in the next example is slightly different, because again though not actually spoken by the person quoted, it is indicative of a part of her speech – the stress and inflexion of a question. Thus that does have to be preserved within the speech marks, but we do not need an additional stop to the sentence:
(c) It was Mary who asked "Why is that spider there?"
FWIW, I agree with you about the ugly redundancy of the comma before the quote, but noting Faldage’s and Helen’s views, perhaps this falls under that broad head of style that is personal preference only.
If our sentence continues after the quote, I would have a choice of adding punctuation, such as
(c2) It was Mary who asked "Why is that spider there?" - but it was John who screamed!
I note however that my bloody MS programs always try and ‘correct’ me if I substitute a simple comma or semi-colon in the same position as the dash. This brings me to another value of punctuation: it is surely not only functional for reasons of logic, but also for reasons of indicating rhythm and other sonorous values. I am inclined to believe that this is why printers have battened onto that strange comma, recognising that there is likely to be a mild caesura in the pattern of speech to preface a quote. Then it gets visually ingrained in the way Faldage notes.
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I agree with NickW about the correct usage of the punctuation. He shows it as I would choose to write it, although I have been known to get it wrong.
But don't blame all printers for lousy punctuation. I worked long and hard on revising a printing house style book many moons ago. At that time, anyway, the newspaper I worked for still prided itself in standing on the burning deck of correct punctuation ...
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Um, thanks I think. I may have to print up this page and read it over off-screen a second time. It seems that we pretty much do what we want to do and it all depends on the writer's interpretation.*
*unless your write for a living and an editor decides what your interpretive opinion is.
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