Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: giggly
  • Music: The Zappas, 'Baby One More Time.'

Possibly the best thing ever said by an editor.

I have a nasty tendency to forget to put the end punctuation of a sentence inside the ' marks when I'm constructing a sentence. So rather than punctuating like this:

"It was very much 'screw you, I'm taking the dog.'"

I'll punctuate like this:

"So it was all 'hate you, hate Kansas'."

Now, this is Not Exactly Correct. And one of my fabulous proofreaders just pointed it out to me by saying:

"The punctuation is LONELY outside of its proper kennel, Seanan! Let it in! Let it snuggle down inside the quotation marks with the rest of the sentence!"

...I love my proofreaders. I love them like burning.
Tags: i love my editors, proofreading
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  • 17 comments

kyrielle

May 29 2008, 22:17:26 UTC 9 years ago

Hee. That's cute! I know which one is correct, but to be honest, I find the "wrong" one more readable. I can't tell '" from " in most fonts, and so the .'" looks like ." to me, while the '." is clear.

(Also, that sentence was fun to write.)

seanan_mcguire

May 30 2008, 00:13:42 UTC 9 years ago

I'm with you, but alas, I must bow to proper grammar once in a while.