From akriman@darwin.helios.nd.edu Mon Sep 4 02:28:01 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id CAA138194 for ; Mon, 4 Sep 2000 02:27:59 -0700 Received: from mailspool.helios.nd.edu (mailspool.helios.nd.edu [129.74.250.7]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id CAA04349 for ; Mon, 4 Sep 2000 02:27:59 -0700 Received: from darwin.helios.nd.edu (darwin.helios.nd.edu [129.74.250.114]) by mailspool.helios.nd.edu (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id EAA25505 for ; Mon, 4 Sep 2000 04:27:58 -0500 (EST) Received: (from akriman@localhost) by darwin.helios.nd.edu (8.10.1/8.10.1/ND-cluster) id e849RwC02558 for classics@u.washington.edu; Mon, 4 Sep 2000 04:27:58 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 04:27:58 -0500 (EST) From: Alfred M Kriman Message-Id: <200009040927.e849RwC02558@darwin.helios.nd.edu> To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: punctuation A week ago Saturday (*), Steve di Giacomo wrote > P.S. Yes, I routinely put the quotation (q.v.) INSIDE the period in dissent > from grammar as this rule seems to deny the period it's proper "role". Since then no one has mentioned what I had always understood to be the accepted explanation of the US convention: the softness of lead. When books were set in movable type, the pressure on small characters was greater than on large ones, and periods and commas were subject to the greatest wear. Moreover, characters adjacent to large white space experienced greater pressure than otherwise. The situation would be worst in the case of a period or comma isolated next to quotation mark, which does not reach down to the baseline of the text, as in <". >. Hence, in order to protect the periods and commas of a font, they came to be placed systematically adjacent to an alphanumeric character -- i.e., within the quotes. This is not a complete explanation, but it does tend to explain why the convention places periods and commas inside a closing double quote, and semicolon, colon, exclamation and question marks outside. I suppose that the preference for a simple, consistent rule also contributed to the ultimate form of the convention. Ralph Hancock suggested as much in his exposition of the British convention [[1]]. I acknowledge that my recollection, as well my practice, differs from Patrick Rourke's recollection of the current Chicago Manual and Danny Adams's of the MLA. Then again, as just illustrated, I'm one of those troglodytes who omit the ess after an apostrophe mark only in forming the possessive of a plural noun (and not in the possessive of just any noun ending in ess). I regard the simplified rule as a conflation of the rule for possessives of plurals with the rule for plurals of nouns ending in certain sibilants. Of course, as we all know, these rules are all rather recent. As RH and PTR noted, punctuation around quotation marks is another conventional matter in which US and Commonwealth usages differ. I recall reading (though I'm not sure it's true) that the US <,"> convention was one of the standards promulgated by Webster (for which he was condemned as more concerned with printing than writing). As RH also pointed out, however, the period-always-before-quote convention was widely observed in 19c Britain. It seems [[1]] that the ``logical'' convention has been the innovation in this case. (*) Pardon me for coming into the discussion late. I'm far out of town, reading email in intense sporadic bouts. [[1]] gopher://140.142.56.13/0R186246-190542-/public/classics/classics.log200008e [[2]] See Fowler quote in a.u.e. faq at http://www.plexoft.com/SBF/FAQaue/index.html#%2c%22+vs+%22%2c I agree with those Fowler opposed, and respectfully disagree with Michael Hendry: period or comma outside quotation mark is uglier. .