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
...go 1 level up... Expand

hsifyppah

May 30 2008, 00:12:38 UTC 9 years ago

That confuses me. Why wouldn't the same problem apply to normal sentences ending in a period?

seanan_mcguire

May 30 2008, 00:14:53 UTC 9 years ago

I think it does -- I mean, look how often we lose terminal punctuation in old books -- but I think this made it more likely.

hsifyppah

May 30 2008, 00:24:39 UTC 9 years ago

What made what more likely? Huh?

I have this disease now where I want to proofread your journal entries and comments because they are words that you wrote and that's what I do. Stab stab! (puts down machete with trembling hands) Uh..

seanan_mcguire

May 30 2008, 00:25:34 UTC 9 years ago

Okay, that's cute, and I'm armed. *waves her machete*