*sighs*

[conuly]

So, apparently my English professor doesn't like the concept of logical punctuation. And she stared at me as she said it, too, so I must've messed up in the essay.

Honestly, it's LOGICAl punctuation. I don't *care* if it's not the standard, the standard won't change until we make it change. Just sitting around saying "gee, I wish there were a better way" isn't going to get us anywhere. Siblings! Rise up! Throw off the shackles of stupid convention, and fight the oppression of illogical punctuation! We will punctuate in the classrooms, we will punctuate in the chatrooms, and in our own private journals. We will punctuate at all costs, and we will never surrender! Today - punctuation! Tomorrow - spelling!

Comments

[conuly]

Logical punctuation means, specifically, putting punctuation outside the quotes (at least where that makes sense).

Let me show some examples.

Standard:

I said "Hi John!"
Are you still feeling "on top of the world?"

Logical:

I said "Hi John!"
Are you still feeling "on top of the world"?

[lakidaa.livejournal.com]

huh. Well, that just makes sense.

..why did we do the traditional punctuation in the first place?

[conuly]

I've heard it had something to do with the way things were typeset originally.

[toastedtuna.livejournal.com]

Ewww. Logical punctuation makes me cringe. LOL! *whips out red pen* That be nastay, and funkay, and ain't no way I could accept a paper like that & not mark the hell out of it.

[cumaeansibyl.livejournal.com]

Amen. Where's my pen?

Not to mention that it should be:

I said, "Hi, John! Are you still feeling 'on top of the world?'"

Commas are your friends. :)

[conuly]

Yes, but they're also yummy, and I had eaten all mine by the time I posted that.

[toastedtuna.livejournal.com]

Hmm. See, I think it should read more like:

I said, "Hi, John! Are you still feeling 'on top of the world'?"

[conuly]

Yes, that's correct beyond belief. Unless you're really crazy and wanna put a period at the end. But you'd have to be nuts.

[conuly]

Of course, the second sentence is unrelated to the first one.... I didn't ask John a question. I just thought up whatever I could to insert.

[conuly]

*glares*

Hey, I don't correct your messy illogical punctuation.

[toastedtuna.livejournal.com]

Technically, I didn't correct yours, either. LOL!

[tungol.livejournal.com]

Hi, I don't know you, I just came across your journal through the Linguaphiles community.

Yay for logical punctuation! I didn't know that was a term for it, or that there ws any sort of movement for it, but for quite some time I've been punctuating that way when I think I can get away with it. It just doesn't seem right to quote punctuation that isn't really part of the quote.

[conuly]

1. There's a very tiny movement of obsessive freaks for it, yes.
2. No, it's not right. Well. I mean, it is, obviously, but it's still wrong.

[ladytalon.livejournal.com]

I'm not too sure about the division between "logical" and "traditional/standard," but my parents own a publishing company. In the U.S. My mom's the copy editor. I also do a lot of copyediting when I work for them (I'm a freelancer). Each book has its own standard to follow. For punctuation, however, when it comes to quotation marks, commas and periods go inside, and exclamation points and question marks go outside, unless they relate directly to the quotation. This is commonly accepted as the industry standard--unless, as I mentioned, the book has its own standard.

So if I were editing something, I'd make it look like this:

After she said "Hello," I asked "How are you?" And then we bought a "Pita." Do you like "Pitas"?

I don't know how they did it with actual block typesetting, but this is how it's generally done now. And really, only old stodgy authors ask to always put punctuation inside quotation marks.

This has gotten to be a long comment.

[conuly]

That's actually what my mom said, but there's a LOT of holdouts in the non-publishing world.

[ladytalon.livejournal.com]

Pff, who cares about the non-publishing world. Obviously they aren't getting stuff published. *grins wryly*

[conuly]

People who need grades?

[ladytalon.livejournal.com]

Well, that was why I grinned wryly.