• Sheridan@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    I feel that punctuation that was not present in the quoted source should not appear between the quote marks.

    • procrastitron@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Conversely, punctuation that was part of the quoted source needs to be included in the quotes.

      The reason there’s room for argument is because there’s no simple rule that adequately covers all scenarios.

      • killingspark@feddit.org
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        10 days ago

        sarcastic tone “I’d also never put punctuation inside of “sarcastic quotes.” It feels wrong.”

        Where is your god now, huh?

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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    10 days ago

    If it was a period I can see the argument (and I’m still not clear on what’s right), but a comma? I can’t see any reason why you would include a comma within the quotes. Even if the quote had a comma in the original, you’re quoting the part before the comma.

    • TootSweet@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      I mean, I’m pretty certain I was taught in school to do things like this:

      “It’s only a block away,” she said.

      And, yeah. I definitely prefer (all else being equal):

      “It’s only a block away”, she said.

      • glimse@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        Logically I prefer it but visually, I hate the way the quotation mark makes a weird space before the comma

        • TootSweet@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          Hrm. What would you think of a ligature or unicode trick that would let you make roughly-speaking on “character” that put the quotes directly above the comma and was only as wide as the wider of the two individual characters? I could maybe get behind that.

          • glimse@lemmy.world
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            10 days ago

            I wouldn’t mind it as shorthand in writing but I think it’d just be weird to have a defined symbol for something so specific

        • webpack@ani.social
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          10 days ago

          well if you do it the other way there’s a space between the quote and the letter so the only difference is if the space is above or below (personally I prefer “”, probably because of coding)

      • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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        10 days ago

        How can I learn a rule I’ve never heard of? Or ever used, I’ve never quoted something and needed to keep the comma in. Give me an example.

        • snugglesthefalse@sh.itjust.works
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          10 days ago

          Yeah, either you’re quoting something that includes the comma and already has a place or you don’t need to end a quote with a comma. It’s just messy.

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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      10 days ago

      I still will change the ones on the right to the left ones if I paste something in and it has them. I think it’s trauma from the days of early HTML coding and not wanting to do all the extra coding for each right and left mark.

      • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        What’s fun is when you come across an old blog that had code snippets, but then later updated their website to automatically convert regular quotes into fancy quotes.

    • marcos@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      People writing English insist the rule on the sentence makes no sense and is different from the one on code.

      If you ask me, I’d suggest we use the code rule in writing too, and make sure to copy punctuation from the original, just to make that people angry.