Subj : Quotation Marks....  1.
To   : Paul Quinn
From : Ardith Hinton
Date : Fri Mar 02 2018 18:00:57

Hi, Paul!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

AH>  And once you'd commented on [Alexander's kludge lines],
AH>  I couldn't help running to the dictionary to clarify my
AH>  understanding of the word "heuristic"... [grin].

PQ>  So would I but I don't have a desperate need


          Thank goodness... at last I've met somebody who actually knows how to 
spell "desperate".  For this relief, much thanks... [Wm. Shakespeare].



PQ>  to know the meaning with any precision at this time
PQ>  of the night,


          Ah.  Thanks for the heads up.  That's something others miss when they 
insist on using UTC time.  If I see a person writing in the middle of the night 
when they usually arise at dawn & go to bed at sunset, I realize they may be in 
deep distress.  I'll take a second look and possibly get back to them ASAP even 
though I have unanswered messages which arrived earlier.  Doing the math I must 
do to calculate "clock time" in Russia or Australia at the time of writing is a 
different skill which involves a different part of the brain.  At 22:39 you are 
ready to hit the sack, while I'm just hitting my stride & wondering if I'll get 
whatever I've been working on finished by midnight.  Glad to know that....  :-)



PQ>  as I have a fair understanding of why the word is used.  ;-)


          I know how it is used in the EdBiz, but wasn't sure how it applied in 
this context.  Fortunately Dallas is well acquainted with both.  :-)



[re Alexander's story about the boy & the cigar]
PQ>  I see it as a narrative of an incident between two
PQ>  people.  I'm trying to keep it simple by looking at
PQ>  it as a 'he said', 'we said', 'they said' sort of
PQ>  thing, where the story (joke) unfolds as the result
PQ>  of the to & fro conversation.  So, I would use double
PQ>  quotes for the statements made in the narrative as
PQ>  they are the actual words spoken.


          Yes, the joke is essentially narrative except for the last two lines. 
That's why I'd be inclined to keep the quotation marks as well.  :-)



PQ>  The simple guide I use is that any words actually
PQ>  spoken are in double quotes.  Anything else lending
PQ>  to understanding statements made or other actions,
PQ>  may be optionally single or double quoted.


          In the interests of clarity I prefer to use double quotation marks as 
my default because they're unlikely to be confused with apostrophes, but I have 
some concerns WRT your use of the word "optional" in the second sentence above. 
As you can see I use double quotation marks to set off isolated words & phrases 
regardless of whether somebody else used them first.  There are conventions WRT 
quotes within quotes... again, in the interests of clarity.  For example:

             "Should I say 'was' or 'were'?" Alexander enquired.  [esp. US]
             'Should I say "was" or "were"?' Alexander enquired.  [esp. UK]

Either way is correct, and whichever others prefer is fine with me.  I can't be 
sure from the above description, however, whether you've grasped the principle. 
I bend rules myself from time to time... but only within certain limits.  Maybe 
the issue of quotes within quotes hadn't occurred to you because you don't read 
the sort of material where it is likely to arise.  If you use an unconventional 
style of punctuation because your advisors hadn't considered the matter either, 
it's no wonder you feel you're up the creek without a paddle sometimes....  ;-)


          Anne Stilman, in her book GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT, says:

             The occasional style guide may instruct you to use
             double marks for some purposes and single marks for
             others, but most keep things simpler.

That's another possibility I hadn't considered until I re-read the same pages I 
turned to awhile ago when Alexander & I discussed this topic.  Style manuals... 
the bane of my existence, as a university student, because it seemed that every 
instructor in the English department wanted us to use a different one!  You may 
have understood perfectly the advice you got from a reputable source & followed 
it to the letter.  But if this source does things very differently from the way 
others do them, their methods may confuse rather than assist your readers.  :-Q




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)

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