There is a general style rule when using quotes, that punctuation such as commas should always go inside the quote. Searching on Google, I found the following at Grammar Book:
Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks, even inside single quotes.
So I immediately went to a random article on Stuff, which happened to be about a free trade deal with South Korea. I searched for ,"
which was found 6 times, then I searched for ",
which wasn't used at all.
In the article, quoting John Key, a section read:
"... we've got a plan to go forward," Mr Key said.
Personally, I think it is a very silly rule to put punctuation inside quotes when it does not belong to the quote (which it never does). So if I were to own my own newspaper, or blog, I would have written it like this:
"... we've got a plan to go forward", Mr Key said.
Which I think is much more logical.
This follows the rule:
The man said "hi." Then we talked for a bit, before he said "bye."
And this follows the way that I think it should be written:
The man said "hi". Then we talked for a bit, before he said "bye".
If I had it my way (which I do on my blog, ha!), I would only put punctuation inside quotations if it really did belong, for instance, if the quotation was a sentence. If I said "I am going to do things any way I like." while standing up, I would put a period inside the quotes. But if I quoted the first half of the sentence, I would put the quote outside because whenever I want to, I can "do things".
The fact is, a lot of copy writing rules seem to be a bit silly, and it doesn't make things any easier to read by putting punctuation together with quotes when it doesn't really belong. With that said, if I were to write an article for a newspaper, I would go ahead and put all that non-belonging punctuation inside quotes, because, as a writer for that newspaper, it would be my job to follow their style guide.
I just checked Jared's blog, Along The Lion, and he had used ,"
in every conceivable place, except one, where he must have slipped up and written ",
when he wrote
“I intend to complete the planning for the light rail system in my first term as mayor, to begin laying rails in my second term, and to see the system complete by 2020”, said Celia Wade-Brown.
This slip-up is perfectly excusable in my book, because I think that is the logical way to do it.
If anyone actually reads this, I would like to hear your opinion on the matter.
2 comments (post comment):
Sure. Put punctuation outside the quotation marks. Just make sure you can put up with me correcting you everytime I see it (lol I probably won't bother but I'll be thinking it nonetheless.) In fact, we always put punctuation inside brackets as well; at the end of a sentence the fullstop always goes inside the brackets.
Btw, with all this excitement about quotation marks, the first quotation mark seems to be missing at the start of each time you quote John Key. Did you cut and paste the quote but miss highlighting the first quotation mark?
Yes, I also unashamedly put my punctuation outside of parentheses as well. I have fixed where I didn't put the quote at the start of John Key's quotes, and yes it was a copy and paste job.
Post a Comment