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

batyatoon

May 29 2008, 23:01:35 UTC 9 years ago

I'm with kyrielle and djonn.

I have the vague notion that there is something like this in British punctuation usage that disagrees with American usage -- anybody know?

tibicina

May 30 2008, 10:38:28 UTC 9 years ago

Both ways are arguably correct, but the one the proofer was arguing for is more correct, particularly in America. (At one point I know I had a book which gave all the different styles for things like this, comma use, etc. and said which stylebook/country they were used in. Sadly, I'm not sure where it is anymore.)

It mostly goes along with the rules for whether the punctuation should go inside or outside of parentheses, or any other sorts of enclosing punctuation. (I believe that the punctuation stays outside of the inner, single quote if you are only quoting a single word/short phrase to indicate that it is jargon/slang and/or questionably accurate - think anything which would be indicated by 'air quotes'... like those.)