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I have "logical" issues with the following bit:
Logical quotation differs from British style in its treatment of colons and semicolons. British and American styles both place them outside the quote marks all the time, while logical-technical style allows them to be placed inside. (An example would be a reference to the C programming language statement, 'printf("Hello, world");'.)
Anything that is written in code cannot automatically be regarded as English (except in the sense that English itself is a species of code). Code is literally a set of instructions to a processor; for computers, code is formatted in such a way that a compiler can readily translate it into machine language. So the example given is misleading because C uses the semicolon as an operator rather than as a punctuation mark. I'd even argue that the single quotes that buttress the C command line should be double quotes because (again) the double quotes inside the command line are operators, not punctuation.
A better example of the use of a semicolon or colon before an end-quote would be, 'The encyclopedist wrote "Common punctuation errors;" instead of "Common punctuation errors:".' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.18.19.169 ( talk) 13:59, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
—
'." It serves a double purpose.
Darkfrog24 (
talk) 15:58, 1 February 2010 (UTC)We need more sources for so-called logical punctuation, WP:LQ. The instructions described in the WP:MoS differ from British style, so we can't just use Cambridge or Hart. I might be able to get my hands on a copy of the ACS style guide, but it would take a few days. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 15:08, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, logical punctuation I'm aware of, but you're calling it logical quotation (and your second source above is about a different issue). We need to stick to what good style guides say. No blogs, no personal opinions from Wikipedians, no terms not found in style guides. Source everything correctly and there will be less confusion. SlimVirgin TALK contribs 03:30, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
From The Chicago Manual of Style: The British style of positioning periods and commas in relation to the closing quotation mark is based on the same logic that in the American system governs the placement of question marks and exclamation points: if they belong to the quoted material, they are placed within the closing quotation mark; if they belong to the including sentence as a whole, they are placed after the quotation mark. The British style is strongly advocated by some American language experts. In defense of nearly a century and a half of the American style, however, it may be said that it seems to have been working fairly well and has not resulted in serious miscommunication. Whereas there clearly is some risk with question marks and exclamation points, there seems little likelihood that readers will be misled concerning the period or comma. There may be some risk in such specialized material as textual criticism, but in that case authors and editors may take care to avoid the danger by alternative phrasing or by employing, in this exacting field, the exacting British system. In linguistic and philosophical works, specialized terms are regularly punctuated the British way, along with the use of single quotation marks. With these qualifications, the University of Chicago Press continues to recommend the American style for periods and commas.
Example of the problem here: when you say things like "While American rules, as per style guides such as MLA and Chicago, allow the placement of periods and commas outside the quotation marks in cases of keyboard entries and web addresses (etc.), this is not typographic punctuation," I have no idea what you mean. No idea what American rules are, or who is saying it's not typographic punctuation, and who (apart from you) is making that distinction. Please cite your sources with page numbers, then I can look it up. SlimVirgin TALK contribs 05:28, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Darkfrog, are you willing to stop using websites and start consulting the style guides directly? SlimVirgin TALK contribs 05:31, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
There are two questions: 1. Does a previous edition of a source become unsuitable for Wikipedia when a newer edition is published? and 2. Is it acceptable to cite this source through an intermediary, such as a website?
In this particular case, one user has found multiple websites that include the same direct quotation of the fourteenth edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (the fifteenth edition is the most current). This quotation is used to source the assertion that the Chicago Manual of Style refers to two specific sets of punctuation practices as "American style" and "British style." Darkfrog24 ( talk) 05:44, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
[4] [5] [6] These three websites all attribute the exact same words to the Chicago Manual of Style. The third gives the edition and page number. I do not suppose that it would be any more difficult for you to track down the paper copy than it would be for me. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 06:10, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Unless our sources specifically say "North America"—the ones I've seen don't—we should say "the U.S. and Canada" or "Canada and the U.S." There are millions of North Americans who are neither American nor Canadian. I realize that in an article about English, many readers will assume that we are discussing the two major English-speaking North American countries, but I feel that equating "North America" with "North America but not Mexico" may offend Mexican readers. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 06:05, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Darkfrog, please stop adding your own opinions; see WP:NOR. SlimVirgin TALK contribs 06:13, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
If you write what the article refers to as Irony at the end of a sentence, does the period go in or out of the quotes?
Ie: He shared his "wisdom". or He shared his "wisdom."
Bioniclepluslotr ( talk) 19:31, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Just a few minutes ago an anonymous IP changed all the quotation marks in this article from straight to curly. This is against the current MOS but IMO it improves the clarity of the information in this particular article. I hope it will not reverted. It’s a very careful and thorough edit, and I wish it had been done by a registered user in case of disagreement. MJ ( t • c) 16:17, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I was wondering about how the sorts for quotation marks were better protection than the sorts for spaces. The line would be filled up with sorts for spaces anyway, thus making the pressure on the commas and full stops identical, or am I mistaken here? The sourcing for this particular bit is from a newsgroup FAQ that mentions one person with an email address as the originator of this information. The email address, however, is dead. I believe that further explanation and verification is necessary, as otherwise – and especially in such brevity – the explanation is not utterly convincing. EDIT: In fact, aren't commas and full stops in most cases followed by a space anyway? How are they protected then? DonSqueak ( talk) 02:48, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
In 'Typographical Considerations' it is mentioned that one cannot end a sentence with two end marks, but how do you construct:
Did Kennedy really say, "Ich bin ein Berliner!"?
I can see that if we question a question we could do without two question marks although this is flatly contradicted by [2] which absolutely recommends using two question marks if it is logical. With the one exclamation and a question about it, surely one must use both? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Billben74 ( talk • contribs) 12:23, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm surprised that no one yet has caught the misuse of the word "irony" in this article. Irony does not mean what this article is using it to mean, Alanis Morissette notwithstanding. It does not mean to use a word in a sarcastic, skeptical, dubious sense at all. I'll have to get out my Thesaurus and see what is the best word to use for this heading. Wjhonson ( talk) 12:50, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
This article should be correct. Some examples improperly put the comma at the end of quoations, inside the quotation marks ("'Good morning, Frank,' greeted HAL.") The last comma does not belong to the quoted text and therefore does not belong inside the quotation marks. It should be: "Good morning, Frank", said HAL. Improper quotation of important people can end up in criminal charges, even if you added only a comma. I request the rewriting of this article. 217.234.55.254 ( talk) 18:48, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
What about the use of vertical quotation marks when they mean "same as line before - just look above". I usually see about 1-3 of them per line, spread out depending on the line length. Is there any specific terminology for this use, and how should it be added to this article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.0.200.59 ( talk) 17:20, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Is there a source for this sentence ~ [h]owever, another convention when quoting text in the body of a paragraph or sentence—for example, in an essay—is to recognize double quotation marks as marking an exact quotation, and single quotation marks as marking a paraphrased quotation or a quotation where grammar, pronouns, or plurality have been changed in order to fit the sentence containing the quotation ~ which is currently unsourced? I ask because it is quite radically in opposition to the usual (and previous in the article) explanations of quote marks as being for exactly quoted material. I fully realise that we use WP:V, not WP:IVENEVERHEARDOFTHAT, but i have to say that the only acceptable way i have ever run across, in academic institutions in the UK, Canada, and the USA, to change "grammar, pronouns, or plurality" has been the use of square brackets, as i do earlier in this query. Cheers, Lindsay Hi 09:02, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
I feel like the source of the quotes should be cited - the first few are from 2001: A Space Odyssey, right? Also, I'm not sure that encyclopedic should use a movie source, instead of a generic sentence (eg. 'Hello,' said John.). -- 67.87.36.128 ( talk) 01:53, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Regarding Quotation_mark#Punctuation: What's the difference between:
I can't help but wonder if one (or both) of these is broken. Since the article says: "In non-fiction, British publishers may permit placing punctuation that is not part of the person’s speech inside the quotation marks but prefer that it be placed outside." I'm guessing that the first example should have the final period outside the quotation marks. But really, I'm not sure what needs to happen.
Even (especially) if the examples are correctly punctuated, some sort of clarification, I think, would be in order. — gogobera ( talk) 01:10, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
This part of the page contains wording that can be a bit confusing. Could someone clear it up a bit?
Quotation marks are written as a pair of opening and closing marks in either of two styles: single (‘…’) or double (“…”). Both styles are common in the English language; however, the single and double styling is considered to be the standard in British and American English respectively.
Especially this part:
Both styles are common in the English language; however, the single and double styling is considered to be the standard in British and American English respectively. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Mayhaymate (
talk •
contribs) 14:42, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
my qoutation marks an the article r — and ———. Y?! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.230.83.81 ( talk) 16:33, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
LINKBook ( talk) 18:11, 6 October 2013 (UTC)LINKBook
Some languages put the first mark low, the second high, like ,this'. It deserves a mention (especially because Poles (and maybe others) keep this form when writing in English because they're not aware of the difference. It'd be good to start a section but it'd be better to have more languages if it's true for others too. Malick78 ( talk) 11:56, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
Okay, whoever put in the claim that "American style" is a misnomer, sorry, but that's WP:OR. If you want that to be part of the article, you have to find a source that says something to the effect of "'American style' is a misnomer." Personally, I don't believe that the fact that some Brits use American style and some Americans use British is enough to justify calling it a misnomer. I deleted the claim itself but kept the part about how not all American writers use American style; there were more enough sources to justify that (I even added another one). Also, if you can find a web site citing the style guide of the American Chemical Society, they use British style too. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 19:16, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
I've sourced this to the bejeezus belt, far more than is actually needed in the article, here: User:SMcCandlish/Logical quotation, though any/all of these sources could be added to the article. The WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV, which is far more serious, is the pushing of typesetters' a.k.a. printers' a.k.a. etc., etc., quotation marks as "American", and logical quotation as "British" (I've PROVEN that these labels are false). It's a blatant agenda. Wikipedia has been directly attacked in the British press for being inaccurate on this. (See essay; I cited that, too). My edits brought the article into line with actual reality. I don't need a source to say "American-style is a misnomer", though the Slate piece essentially does this, as do others I've cited in the essay. It's just wording expressing the cited facts; if someone doesn't like them exactly as they are, they can be tweaked, but reverting everything back to "American" is a falsification of the facts. Proponents of this hyper-nationalistic label, on whom the burden of proof lies, have to show reliable and independent sources for this term. The vast majority of published style guides are neither, because their authors and publisher have a very strong, vested monetary interest in falsely nationalizing punctuation and other grammar points, because this is what sells style guides. Those that do falsely patrioticize the issue do so only by ignoring demonstrable facts (which I've provided citations to in the essay), so they're not reliable as well as not independent of the subject. It's a bit like quoting guidebooks on American vs. British "psychics" for "facts" about the veracity of the claims made by the practitioners.
We can put aside the argument about "American" for the time being, but the "British" bit has to go. The sources I've found (see above) conclusively prove that there is no "British style", there are several British styles, mostly similar but sometimes not, and all with different rationales, and most of them are, necessarily, not logical quotation. They're somewhere between logical and typesetters'/American quotation. I'm tempted to revert to what I wrote before, and then partially self-rv to use Darkfrog24's "American" instead of "typesetters'" until that separate issue is settled. But for the short term, this article is just factually incorrect on British punctuation, and a major British newspaper has laughed at us for it in public. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 00:29, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
Should Wikipedia refer to two punctuation systems as "American" and "British" even if not all American/British writers and style guides use/require them?
RFC response: As the article stands at present it strikes me (speaking as an editor that happens to be neither British nor American, and who has not seen either the article or the discussion to date) as thoroughly comprehensible, plausible, inoffensive, natural and coherent. Firstly, given the explanation in the article, the term "misnomer" is unnecessary at best, because it is quite clear in context that "British" and "American" are not represented as being definitive but rather as terms of convenience. The use of quotation marks in the text stresses the point adequately, possibly even slightly excessively (though, given the disagreement, that seems justifiable). Secondly, given that the terms are indicative rather than definitive, I should regard "misnomer" itself as a misnomer in context — no categorical terminology is under consideration. I support omission of the term absolutely; in context it is quite unnecessary, somewhat excessive, and slightly undesirable. JonRichfield ( talk) 09:36, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
This matter seems to have been dealt with. If there are no further comments, I will remove the dispute tag tomorrow. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 23:06, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
your example:
If Hal says: "All systems are functional," then:
Incorrect: Hal said "everything was going extremely well." Correct: Hal said that everything was going extremely well.
could be much improved by changing it to:
If Hal said: "All systems are functional," then he meant "everything was going extremely well." (incorrect)
everything was going extremely well. (correct) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.168.75.9 ( talk) 16:59, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
Where is any discussion of the application of quotation marks to distinguish multiple-paragraph quotation - and of course vs. the alternative of setting off the entire multi-paragraph section with double indents on both margins to separate from the main body. Danleywolfe ( talk) 00:13, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
The History section does not enlighten us at all - nor does Quotation mark glyphs Wiki q.v. The major alternative glyph, the Guillemet (q.v. Wiki) *does* tell us about a typesetter in 1525-1598 AD and which languages use it. By comparison, where did the 66/99 marks come from; what was their inspiration - does anyone know anything about any of this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.158.30.10 ( talk) 00:52, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
This is an issue that had been confusing me for some time... And just right now I could understand why certain English texts use a norm like that of Brazilian Portuguese (i.e. the "English" one), and some don't (originally I thought a group out of the two was misspelling it, but then I realised it had to be an amazingly widespread 'error' out of such conclusion). How many languages, if any, use comma before the last quotation mark as in the USA? 177.65.15.49 ( talk) 23:52, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
Also, the norm in Brazilian Portuguese is to use quotation marks before dots, but in this case I think it is part of a wider rule in languages other than English... And c'mon people, post something here. It's been a week. 177.65.15.49 ( talk) 21:11, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
When refering brand names do we use quotes or capital letters? — Preceding unsigned comment added by FoxxyFuyumi ( talk • contribs) 14:54, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't understand why Wikipedia's main article about quotation marks is written from an Anglocentric viewpoint, instead of discussing the use of quotation marks in general, in all languages. If this article is only about the use of quotation marks in English, then why isn't it titled Use of quotation marks in English? Jarble ( talk) 16:05, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
I have removed the reference to the ABA Journal requiring the use of logical quotation (a.k.a. British style) punctuation. While this was true in 1951, and some point in the past decades, the American Bar Association (ABA) decided that it would use the overwhelming majority quotation punctuation practices prevalent in the United States in the ABA Journal, as well as its many other publications. As of 2013, the ABA does not maintain a separate internal style guide for its publications, but on its webpage for attorney submissions for publication, it makes a crystal clear statement that it relies on The Chicago Manual of Style "for all style, punctuation, and capitalization matters in written text as well as general rules of book making." (Please see [15].) I also provide two links to current ABA Journal articles that clearly demonstrate that the Journal is using traditional quotation punctuation in its flagship monthly publication, and not logical quotation. (Please see [16] and [17].) Anyone who wishes to further verify this is welcome to browse other online articles of the ABA Journal from the links provided. Dirtlawyer1 ( talk) 20:31, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
see Guillemet -- Krauss ( talk) 12:09, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
Kinda needs an explanation about how this could have occurred in the first place... Turkeyphan t 02:59, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
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While various sources lump them together and gloss over the differences, they're easily and clearly distinguishable, and have a different rationale. LQ always puts outside the final quotation mark any terminal punctuation that was not in the original source, and does not modify the quoted punctuation (except in a square-bracketed interpolation), while British (i.e. Oxford/Hart's/Fowler's) usually puts it outside, but permits exceptions for both inserting extraneous punctuation and modifying the quoted punctuation, within the quotation, if the writer feels it serves the "sense" of the sentence better. Neither are possible in logical quotation, which is always faithful to the source material. I'll source this in detail after I finish the citation digging and formatting. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 13:28, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
It wouldn't matter anyway. If we have RS that say "cars do not have truck beds" and other RS that say "pick-up trucks are like cars, but have truck beds", it doesn't matter how many sources you can find that, for whatever convenience reason they may have, lump trucks in with cars (e.g. because they're all about water vehicles and mention land vehicles in passing, as "cars", only to distinguish them from water vehicles). The fact that cars are distinguishable in reliable sources, per specific features of them, cannot be magically erased. It's perfectly fine to say that some sources lump trucks in with cars; it's not okay to say in WP's voice that trucks and cars are identical, that "car" and "truck" are two names for exactly the same thing, and deny any mention of their distinction. That's precisely what you're trying to do. We also don't need any direct-comparison sources, since the style guides publish definitions, and they're clearly distinguishable. I don't need a source that directly compares a pool ball and 1/8 ounce of cocaine, side by side, to write about how the word " 8-ball" has more than one meaning, and to write about those meanings separately, nor to prevent you from trying to change pool articles to say that the games are played with drug baggies, not balls. That's also exactly what you're trying to do here. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 02:01, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
Darkfrog24 ( talk · contribs), presently engaged in a three-day editwarring campaign at WP:MOS and WT:MOS, just deleted a reliable and properly cited source here at Quotation marks in English [19] (cite of a neutral article about logical quotation by a language professor and well-known writer on English language usage, that was used for multiple citations in the article, which DF broke by doing so), and replaced it with an anti-LQ rant from someone's blog. Classic WP:UNDUE and WP:POV. This should be reverted, but I don't want to do it myself any time soon, lest I be seen as editwarring, too. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:19, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
We're up [23]. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 11:44, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
The section on punctuation placement seems messy. A lot of that is because its current format is a compromise dating from an RfC a few years back. One solution would be to remodel this section based on Full_stop#Punctuation_styles_when_quoting, which was carefully edited earlier this year. It's clear, it covers national crossover, and it's a lot shorter (we might want to add to it a little). Thoughts? Darkfrog24 ( talk) 16:40, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
User @ Dicklyon: just added Preparing for Call Center Interviews as a source (book, 2007, by Namrata Palta, Lotus Press, New Delhi). I'm not sure it's suitable. [27] It certainly is a published book, but I think it may have been playing it fast and loose considering that punctuation is outside its expressed purview. For example, I read a statistics textbook once that said "because humans have 48 chromosomes, the number of possible genetic combinations is (exponent)," which isn't true because it neglects the process of crossing over that takes place during meiosis. The source was RS, but it wasn't right about something outside its wheelhouse. The claim that American style was established for typographical reasons, for example, is usually copied off the old version of this page, which was not at that time properly sourced (old forum post).
The text that this source was added to support was "With regard to quotation marks adjacent to periods and commas, there are two styles of punctuation in widespread use. These two styles are most commonly referred to as "American" and "British" (the latter of which is also called "logical quotation"). Both systems have the same rules regarding question marks, exclamation points, colons, and semicolons. However, they differ on the treatment of periods and commas." We can probably find many more sources that establish this.
If there is no objection, I'll remove PCCI tomorrow. If there is any objection, we'll keep talking. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 19:00, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
She still sounds amazed when she says: ‘We were turned down because “we represented too small a minority of the population”. They could still get away with saying things like that then.’
She still sounds amazed when she says: 'We were turned down because "we represented too small a minority of the population." They could still get away with saying things like that then.'In theory anyway. The internal quote doesn't actually track; it's purporting to be the expression of whoever did the turning down, but it includes the we of those who were turned down. So it would probably be
She still sounds amazed when she says: 'We were turned down because we "represented too small a minority of the population". ...'. At that point it would be a sentence fragment (albeit an almost complete one) so many British sources would then have the punctuation as
"...population".. But not all of them. Logical quotation would permit either placement, simply not falsification of period as a comma or semicolone inside the quote, if the structure were changed to something like
She says, 'We were turned down because we "represented too small a minority of the population", and still sounds amazed. 'They could still ....'A large number of British publishers would have
...population,"here just like American journalism would, and this is proof that BQ is not LQ. Of course we went over this 20 times before in every other forum, so I'm don't expect the one editor who doesn't get it to suddenly get it this time in this venue. The Guardian already told us publicly that this article is making an error on this very matter in this article several years ago, yet largely because of the FUD-injecting behavior of a single editor it's not been corrected. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:40, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
The CMoS is (I think we all agree) a largely reliable source when it comes to what it (among many other such works) helps define, namely the general practices of common-denominator, non-journalism, and otherwise non-specialized American publication style. It does not define, and is not a reliable source for, anything it simply glosses over or has a clear bias against, such as logical quotation, "British" (Commonwealth) styles, their definitions, and how they differ. On these matters it is vague, and vacillates between deferential and antagonistic. It defers, for three editions in a row, to The New Hacker's Dictionary, an LQ source, for "computer writing", and defers to Oxford, et al., for British styles, and to linguistics sources on linguistic use of LQ, etc., but tries in vain to convince philosophy publishers to abandon their context-specific use of LQ in their own field (which they've been using since at least the 19th c.), a matter on which CMoS is clearly a primary source of activism, not a secondary authority.
The clear problem here is in assuming that a sometimes-secondary source that is reliable for some things within its purview, is always a reliable secondary source for everything for which someone might want it to be. WP:RS doesn't work that way. It's exactly the same thing as trying to cite a zoology source that glosses over some distinctions between two species of similar plants, and conflates them in passing, as somehow more reliable on the matter than the botanical sources that define and distinguish those plants in detail as different species. It's long past time to stop persisting in this farce. It doesn't matter how much you love CMoS; there is no One World Holy Authority on English. If there were, it sure as hell wouldn't be CMoS, which is riddled with errors. Not just of interpretation but of demonstrable fact, ranging from citing sources that do not even address what CMoS cites them for, to CMoS directly contradicting itself from example to example, both in the same section. I could go on, but every second spent arguing with you feels like a waste of time. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 08:26, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
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Why is the vast majority of the talk from DarkFrog24? If that were turned down, wouldn't we have a relatively sensible situation here? Do we need all this noise? Dicklyon ( talk) 07:27, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
1 Number of edits
Come on, don't make this personal. Don't look at how many Wikipedians believe that something is sensible. Look at how many sources support it. ( WP:V) If I'm doing the work of many editors, good. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 13:28, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
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Since we're getting a little traffic on this talk page, what do you two think of this? [31] I'd have implemented it a week or so after proposing it, but by then MOS:SUPPORTS had gotten active. Now that that's died down, what do you think? Darkfrog24 ( talk) 01:03, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
I have something to ask about "Typesetters' Punctuation/Quotation.": Exactly how were those particular pieces of type possibly going to break or be damaged so easily, and what were those pieces of type even made of? Also, I am pretty sure that this article may or may not explain the origin of "Typesetters' Punctuation/Quotation.". Does it? Jim856796 ( talk) 04:31, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
I did not get from the examples and text, whether this is allowed/preferred in British quotation - the period outside the quotation:
According to the lead section, "The closing single quotation mark is identical or similar in form to the apostrophe…". No example is given, however, of a font with different glyphs for the two, nor have I ever encountered such a font. Unless someone objects, I shall delete the words "or similar".
Peter Brown ( talk) 00:46, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
I apologize for the disrespect. After starting this discussion, I found a clear statement in The Chicago Manual of Style which I cited in my edit to the article, which you have reverted. It reads, "The apostrophe is the same character as the right single quotation mark (defined for Unicode as U+2019…)." I thought this settled the matter. In turn, I complain that you should not be replacing Wikipedia text that contains a bona fide reference with contrary text that does not.
You claim that using U+0027 as a quotation mark is an error, even though is prescribed by the
Wikipedia MOS and used consistently by sources such as
Al Jazeera English. At least in Wikipedia's case, this is not a matter of convenience, since ‘
and ’
are readily available. You also complain about the fact that
MS Word uses U+2019 for the apostrophe (as does
The New York Times – see
the current front page which refers to "The Watergate class of ’74" using U+2019). Also check out
The Manchester Guardian. If a usage is widespread among reputable publications, it's doubtful that it can be called an error.
Your source is self-contradictory. It says, "A Unicode font might have several different characters for a symbol that looks like a single quote mark, but only one of them is a true single quote" and then goes on to identify both U+2018 and U+2019 as true single quotes. Peter Brown ( talk) 17:41, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
The article says:
"The typographic closing double quotation mark and the neutral double quotation mark are similar to—and sometimes stand in for—the ditto mark and the double prime symbol." (emphasis added)
If I understand correctly, that is somewhat incorrect. These are not just similar to the ditto mark; they are the ditto mark (in English). There is no separate character code provided for ditto marks in English. Is that correct? — BarrelProof ( talk) 22:58, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
@
Bazza 7: You reverted my
contribution to this article with the edit summary, that's interesting, but dealt with in the
square bracket article and off-topic here (this is an article about quotation marks in English, not
quotations)
.
But the quotations article appears to be about the linguistic phenomena of quoting; the word "typographic" appears only once in that article, but twenty-two times in this article. And this article is hardly strictly confined to the topic of quotation marks themselves but includes all manner of related information, like what key combinations to press to insert them in different operating systems, and the fact that they need to be accompanied by backslashes / escaped when nested in some programming languages.
The whole reason I ended up tracking down this information is because I came to this specific article looking for it, first, and couldn't find it, then ended up elbow-deep in the AP Stylebook before its instruction to never use square brackets (in news articles, apparently because of some twentieth-century technological problem, which I wouldn't be surprised to find is derived from telegraph encoding standard issues or something like that originally) sent me back to Wikipedia to look at the brackets article.
I hardly reproduced any of the seven-paragraph associated subsection of the brackets article; so tl;dr can we at least include a single sentence, so that someone who comes to this article looking for the same information I did—how to denote a parenthesis (rhetoric) inside quotation marks in the most orthodox fashion—can find their way there? -- ‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 13:21, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
It seems like the same sort of information as the currently-included sentence,A late-twentieth-century and twenty-first century convention is the use of square brackets to mark off words or characters between the quotation marks that were not present in the original material such as paraphrasing, changes in capitalization, non- vocable sounds in a transcription of an audio recording, etc.
Other languages use an
escape character, often the
backslash, as in 'eat \'hot\' dogs'
except that it's about punctuation used in coordination with quotation marks in English-language prose, rather than in programming languages derived from English and other human languages. --
‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡
|℡| 16:27, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
I've omitted the era when this started as a reference is needed; reinstate if you have one. Same applies if you're attached to your original suggestion. Bazza ( talk) 17:05, 30 November 2020 (UTC)A convention is the use of square brackets to indicate content between the quotation marks that has been modified from, or was not present in, the original material.
In British English these aren't even called quotation marks at all, they're called inverted commas or speech marks. I am going to remove the template, because it's easier than renaming the article and rewriting the article to use the different terms. Mvolz ( talk) 10:58, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
We have a list masquerading as reference citation, which is huge and reads:
Other style guides and reference volumes include the following: U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual (2008, p. 217), US Department of Education's IES Style Guide (2005, p. 43), The Canadian Style: A Guide to Writing and Editing (1997, p. 148), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, International Reading Association Style Guide, American Dialect Society, Association of Legal Writing Directors' ALWD Citation Manual, The McGraw-Hill Desk Reference by K. D. Sullivan (2006, p. 52), Webster's New World Punctuation by Geraldine Woods (2005, p. 68), The New Oxford Guide to Writing by Thomas S. Kane (1994, pp. 278, 305, 306), Merriam-Webster's Manual for Writers and Editors by Merriam-Webster (1998, p. 27), Simon & Schuster Handbook for Writers by Lynn Troyka, et al. (1993, p. 517), Science and Technical Writing by Philip Rubens (2001, p. 208), Health Professionals Style Manual by Shirley Fondiller and Barbara Nerone (2006, p. 72), The Gregg Reference Manual by William A. Sabin (2000, p. 247), The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation by Jane Straus(2007, p. 61), The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage by Allan M. Siegal, The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge (2004, p. 788), The Copyeditor's Handbook by Amy Einsohn (2000, p. 111), The Grammar Bible by Michael Strumpf, Auriel Douglas (2004, p. 446), Elements of Style by William Strunk and Elwyn B. White (1979, p. 36), Little English Handbook by Edward P. J. Corbett (1997, p. 135), Commonsense Grammar and Style by Phillip S. Sparks (2004, p. 18), Handbook of Technical Writing by Gerald Alred et al. (2006, pp. 83, 373), MIT Guide To Science and Engineering Communication by J. Paradis and M. L. Zimmerman (2002, p. 314), Guide to Writing Empirical Papers by G. David Garson (2002, p. 178), Modern English by A. L. Lazarus, A. MacLeish, and H. W. Smith (1971, p. 71), The Scott Foresman Handbook for Writers (8th ed.) by John Ruszkiewicz et al., Comma Sense by Richard Lederer, John Shore (2007, p. 138), Write right! by Jan Venolia (2001, p. 82), Scholastic Journalism by Earl English and Clarence Hach (1962. p. 75), Grammar in Plain English by Harriet Diamond and Phyllis Dutwin (2005, p. 199), Crimes Against the English Language by Jill Meryl Levy (2005, p. 21), The Analytical Writer by Adrienne Robins (1997, p. 524), Writing with a Purpose by James McNab McCrimmon (1973, p. 415), Writing and Reporting News by Carole Rich (2000, p. 60), The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well by Tom Goldstein (2003, p. 163), Woodroof's Quotations, Commas And Other Things English by D. K. Woodroof (2005, pp. 10–12), Journalism Language and Expression by Sundara Rajan (2005, p. 76), The Business Writer's Handbook by Gerald Alred et al. (2006, p. 451), The Business Style Handbook by Helen Cunningham (2002, p. 213), Essentials of English by Vincent Hopper (2000, p. 127).
This material needs to be merged into List of style guides. It is neither a reference citation nor an appropriate non-citation footnote in this article. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:56, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
The usage examples section Quotation_marks_in_English#Titles_of_artistic_works states "Whether these are single or double depends on the context; however, many styles, especially for poetry, prefer the use of single quotation marks." but every example presents the use of double quotes only, leaving an unhanded exception in my understanding single quote usage.
It would be useful to provide some examples from the "many styles" or, as a last resort, dare I suggest, we request some contributions from a poet?
Also, did I miss a page level/implied reference for all this content? James Bateaux ( talk) 01:13, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||
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This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later. |
I have "logical" issues with the following bit:
Logical quotation differs from British style in its treatment of colons and semicolons. British and American styles both place them outside the quote marks all the time, while logical-technical style allows them to be placed inside. (An example would be a reference to the C programming language statement, 'printf("Hello, world");'.)
Anything that is written in code cannot automatically be regarded as English (except in the sense that English itself is a species of code). Code is literally a set of instructions to a processor; for computers, code is formatted in such a way that a compiler can readily translate it into machine language. So the example given is misleading because C uses the semicolon as an operator rather than as a punctuation mark. I'd even argue that the single quotes that buttress the C command line should be double quotes because (again) the double quotes inside the command line are operators, not punctuation.
A better example of the use of a semicolon or colon before an end-quote would be, 'The encyclopedist wrote "Common punctuation errors;" instead of "Common punctuation errors:".' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.18.19.169 ( talk) 13:59, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
—
'." It serves a double purpose.
Darkfrog24 (
talk) 15:58, 1 February 2010 (UTC)We need more sources for so-called logical punctuation, WP:LQ. The instructions described in the WP:MoS differ from British style, so we can't just use Cambridge or Hart. I might be able to get my hands on a copy of the ACS style guide, but it would take a few days. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 15:08, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Yes, logical punctuation I'm aware of, but you're calling it logical quotation (and your second source above is about a different issue). We need to stick to what good style guides say. No blogs, no personal opinions from Wikipedians, no terms not found in style guides. Source everything correctly and there will be less confusion. SlimVirgin TALK contribs 03:30, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
From The Chicago Manual of Style: The British style of positioning periods and commas in relation to the closing quotation mark is based on the same logic that in the American system governs the placement of question marks and exclamation points: if they belong to the quoted material, they are placed within the closing quotation mark; if they belong to the including sentence as a whole, they are placed after the quotation mark. The British style is strongly advocated by some American language experts. In defense of nearly a century and a half of the American style, however, it may be said that it seems to have been working fairly well and has not resulted in serious miscommunication. Whereas there clearly is some risk with question marks and exclamation points, there seems little likelihood that readers will be misled concerning the period or comma. There may be some risk in such specialized material as textual criticism, but in that case authors and editors may take care to avoid the danger by alternative phrasing or by employing, in this exacting field, the exacting British system. In linguistic and philosophical works, specialized terms are regularly punctuated the British way, along with the use of single quotation marks. With these qualifications, the University of Chicago Press continues to recommend the American style for periods and commas.
Example of the problem here: when you say things like "While American rules, as per style guides such as MLA and Chicago, allow the placement of periods and commas outside the quotation marks in cases of keyboard entries and web addresses (etc.), this is not typographic punctuation," I have no idea what you mean. No idea what American rules are, or who is saying it's not typographic punctuation, and who (apart from you) is making that distinction. Please cite your sources with page numbers, then I can look it up. SlimVirgin TALK contribs 05:28, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Darkfrog, are you willing to stop using websites and start consulting the style guides directly? SlimVirgin TALK contribs 05:31, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
There are two questions: 1. Does a previous edition of a source become unsuitable for Wikipedia when a newer edition is published? and 2. Is it acceptable to cite this source through an intermediary, such as a website?
In this particular case, one user has found multiple websites that include the same direct quotation of the fourteenth edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (the fifteenth edition is the most current). This quotation is used to source the assertion that the Chicago Manual of Style refers to two specific sets of punctuation practices as "American style" and "British style." Darkfrog24 ( talk) 05:44, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
[4] [5] [6] These three websites all attribute the exact same words to the Chicago Manual of Style. The third gives the edition and page number. I do not suppose that it would be any more difficult for you to track down the paper copy than it would be for me. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 06:10, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Unless our sources specifically say "North America"—the ones I've seen don't—we should say "the U.S. and Canada" or "Canada and the U.S." There are millions of North Americans who are neither American nor Canadian. I realize that in an article about English, many readers will assume that we are discussing the two major English-speaking North American countries, but I feel that equating "North America" with "North America but not Mexico" may offend Mexican readers. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 06:05, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
Darkfrog, please stop adding your own opinions; see WP:NOR. SlimVirgin TALK contribs 06:13, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
If you write what the article refers to as Irony at the end of a sentence, does the period go in or out of the quotes?
Ie: He shared his "wisdom". or He shared his "wisdom."
Bioniclepluslotr ( talk) 19:31, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Just a few minutes ago an anonymous IP changed all the quotation marks in this article from straight to curly. This is against the current MOS but IMO it improves the clarity of the information in this particular article. I hope it will not reverted. It’s a very careful and thorough edit, and I wish it had been done by a registered user in case of disagreement. MJ ( t • c) 16:17, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I was wondering about how the sorts for quotation marks were better protection than the sorts for spaces. The line would be filled up with sorts for spaces anyway, thus making the pressure on the commas and full stops identical, or am I mistaken here? The sourcing for this particular bit is from a newsgroup FAQ that mentions one person with an email address as the originator of this information. The email address, however, is dead. I believe that further explanation and verification is necessary, as otherwise – and especially in such brevity – the explanation is not utterly convincing. EDIT: In fact, aren't commas and full stops in most cases followed by a space anyway? How are they protected then? DonSqueak ( talk) 02:48, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
In 'Typographical Considerations' it is mentioned that one cannot end a sentence with two end marks, but how do you construct:
Did Kennedy really say, "Ich bin ein Berliner!"?
I can see that if we question a question we could do without two question marks although this is flatly contradicted by [2] which absolutely recommends using two question marks if it is logical. With the one exclamation and a question about it, surely one must use both? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Billben74 ( talk • contribs) 12:23, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
I'm surprised that no one yet has caught the misuse of the word "irony" in this article. Irony does not mean what this article is using it to mean, Alanis Morissette notwithstanding. It does not mean to use a word in a sarcastic, skeptical, dubious sense at all. I'll have to get out my Thesaurus and see what is the best word to use for this heading. Wjhonson ( talk) 12:50, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
This article should be correct. Some examples improperly put the comma at the end of quoations, inside the quotation marks ("'Good morning, Frank,' greeted HAL.") The last comma does not belong to the quoted text and therefore does not belong inside the quotation marks. It should be: "Good morning, Frank", said HAL. Improper quotation of important people can end up in criminal charges, even if you added only a comma. I request the rewriting of this article. 217.234.55.254 ( talk) 18:48, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
What about the use of vertical quotation marks when they mean "same as line before - just look above". I usually see about 1-3 of them per line, spread out depending on the line length. Is there any specific terminology for this use, and how should it be added to this article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.0.200.59 ( talk) 17:20, 21 October 2010 (UTC)
Is there a source for this sentence ~ [h]owever, another convention when quoting text in the body of a paragraph or sentence—for example, in an essay—is to recognize double quotation marks as marking an exact quotation, and single quotation marks as marking a paraphrased quotation or a quotation where grammar, pronouns, or plurality have been changed in order to fit the sentence containing the quotation ~ which is currently unsourced? I ask because it is quite radically in opposition to the usual (and previous in the article) explanations of quote marks as being for exactly quoted material. I fully realise that we use WP:V, not WP:IVENEVERHEARDOFTHAT, but i have to say that the only acceptable way i have ever run across, in academic institutions in the UK, Canada, and the USA, to change "grammar, pronouns, or plurality" has been the use of square brackets, as i do earlier in this query. Cheers, Lindsay Hi 09:02, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
I feel like the source of the quotes should be cited - the first few are from 2001: A Space Odyssey, right? Also, I'm not sure that encyclopedic should use a movie source, instead of a generic sentence (eg. 'Hello,' said John.). -- 67.87.36.128 ( talk) 01:53, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
Regarding Quotation_mark#Punctuation: What's the difference between:
I can't help but wonder if one (or both) of these is broken. Since the article says: "In non-fiction, British publishers may permit placing punctuation that is not part of the person’s speech inside the quotation marks but prefer that it be placed outside." I'm guessing that the first example should have the final period outside the quotation marks. But really, I'm not sure what needs to happen.
Even (especially) if the examples are correctly punctuated, some sort of clarification, I think, would be in order. — gogobera ( talk) 01:10, 3 June 2011 (UTC)
This part of the page contains wording that can be a bit confusing. Could someone clear it up a bit?
Quotation marks are written as a pair of opening and closing marks in either of two styles: single (‘…’) or double (“…”). Both styles are common in the English language; however, the single and double styling is considered to be the standard in British and American English respectively.
Especially this part:
Both styles are common in the English language; however, the single and double styling is considered to be the standard in British and American English respectively. — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Mayhaymate (
talk •
contribs) 14:42, 30 July 2011 (UTC)
my qoutation marks an the article r — and ———. Y?! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.230.83.81 ( talk) 16:33, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
LINKBook ( talk) 18:11, 6 October 2013 (UTC)LINKBook
Some languages put the first mark low, the second high, like ,this'. It deserves a mention (especially because Poles (and maybe others) keep this form when writing in English because they're not aware of the difference. It'd be good to start a section but it'd be better to have more languages if it's true for others too. Malick78 ( talk) 11:56, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
Okay, whoever put in the claim that "American style" is a misnomer, sorry, but that's WP:OR. If you want that to be part of the article, you have to find a source that says something to the effect of "'American style' is a misnomer." Personally, I don't believe that the fact that some Brits use American style and some Americans use British is enough to justify calling it a misnomer. I deleted the claim itself but kept the part about how not all American writers use American style; there were more enough sources to justify that (I even added another one). Also, if you can find a web site citing the style guide of the American Chemical Society, they use British style too. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 19:16, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
I've sourced this to the bejeezus belt, far more than is actually needed in the article, here: User:SMcCandlish/Logical quotation, though any/all of these sources could be added to the article. The WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV, which is far more serious, is the pushing of typesetters' a.k.a. printers' a.k.a. etc., etc., quotation marks as "American", and logical quotation as "British" (I've PROVEN that these labels are false). It's a blatant agenda. Wikipedia has been directly attacked in the British press for being inaccurate on this. (See essay; I cited that, too). My edits brought the article into line with actual reality. I don't need a source to say "American-style is a misnomer", though the Slate piece essentially does this, as do others I've cited in the essay. It's just wording expressing the cited facts; if someone doesn't like them exactly as they are, they can be tweaked, but reverting everything back to "American" is a falsification of the facts. Proponents of this hyper-nationalistic label, on whom the burden of proof lies, have to show reliable and independent sources for this term. The vast majority of published style guides are neither, because their authors and publisher have a very strong, vested monetary interest in falsely nationalizing punctuation and other grammar points, because this is what sells style guides. Those that do falsely patrioticize the issue do so only by ignoring demonstrable facts (which I've provided citations to in the essay), so they're not reliable as well as not independent of the subject. It's a bit like quoting guidebooks on American vs. British "psychics" for "facts" about the veracity of the claims made by the practitioners.
We can put aside the argument about "American" for the time being, but the "British" bit has to go. The sources I've found (see above) conclusively prove that there is no "British style", there are several British styles, mostly similar but sometimes not, and all with different rationales, and most of them are, necessarily, not logical quotation. They're somewhere between logical and typesetters'/American quotation. I'm tempted to revert to what I wrote before, and then partially self-rv to use Darkfrog24's "American" instead of "typesetters'" until that separate issue is settled. But for the short term, this article is just factually incorrect on British punctuation, and a major British newspaper has laughed at us for it in public. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 00:29, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
Should Wikipedia refer to two punctuation systems as "American" and "British" even if not all American/British writers and style guides use/require them?
RFC response: As the article stands at present it strikes me (speaking as an editor that happens to be neither British nor American, and who has not seen either the article or the discussion to date) as thoroughly comprehensible, plausible, inoffensive, natural and coherent. Firstly, given the explanation in the article, the term "misnomer" is unnecessary at best, because it is quite clear in context that "British" and "American" are not represented as being definitive but rather as terms of convenience. The use of quotation marks in the text stresses the point adequately, possibly even slightly excessively (though, given the disagreement, that seems justifiable). Secondly, given that the terms are indicative rather than definitive, I should regard "misnomer" itself as a misnomer in context — no categorical terminology is under consideration. I support omission of the term absolutely; in context it is quite unnecessary, somewhat excessive, and slightly undesirable. JonRichfield ( talk) 09:36, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
This matter seems to have been dealt with. If there are no further comments, I will remove the dispute tag tomorrow. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 23:06, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
your example:
If Hal says: "All systems are functional," then:
Incorrect: Hal said "everything was going extremely well." Correct: Hal said that everything was going extremely well.
could be much improved by changing it to:
If Hal said: "All systems are functional," then he meant "everything was going extremely well." (incorrect)
everything was going extremely well. (correct) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.168.75.9 ( talk) 16:59, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
Where is any discussion of the application of quotation marks to distinguish multiple-paragraph quotation - and of course vs. the alternative of setting off the entire multi-paragraph section with double indents on both margins to separate from the main body. Danleywolfe ( talk) 00:13, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
The History section does not enlighten us at all - nor does Quotation mark glyphs Wiki q.v. The major alternative glyph, the Guillemet (q.v. Wiki) *does* tell us about a typesetter in 1525-1598 AD and which languages use it. By comparison, where did the 66/99 marks come from; what was their inspiration - does anyone know anything about any of this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.158.30.10 ( talk) 00:52, 31 July 2012 (UTC)
This is an issue that had been confusing me for some time... And just right now I could understand why certain English texts use a norm like that of Brazilian Portuguese (i.e. the "English" one), and some don't (originally I thought a group out of the two was misspelling it, but then I realised it had to be an amazingly widespread 'error' out of such conclusion). How many languages, if any, use comma before the last quotation mark as in the USA? 177.65.15.49 ( talk) 23:52, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
Also, the norm in Brazilian Portuguese is to use quotation marks before dots, but in this case I think it is part of a wider rule in languages other than English... And c'mon people, post something here. It's been a week. 177.65.15.49 ( talk) 21:11, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
When refering brand names do we use quotes or capital letters? — Preceding unsigned comment added by FoxxyFuyumi ( talk • contribs) 14:54, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't understand why Wikipedia's main article about quotation marks is written from an Anglocentric viewpoint, instead of discussing the use of quotation marks in general, in all languages. If this article is only about the use of quotation marks in English, then why isn't it titled Use of quotation marks in English? Jarble ( talk) 16:05, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
I have removed the reference to the ABA Journal requiring the use of logical quotation (a.k.a. British style) punctuation. While this was true in 1951, and some point in the past decades, the American Bar Association (ABA) decided that it would use the overwhelming majority quotation punctuation practices prevalent in the United States in the ABA Journal, as well as its many other publications. As of 2013, the ABA does not maintain a separate internal style guide for its publications, but on its webpage for attorney submissions for publication, it makes a crystal clear statement that it relies on The Chicago Manual of Style "for all style, punctuation, and capitalization matters in written text as well as general rules of book making." (Please see [15].) I also provide two links to current ABA Journal articles that clearly demonstrate that the Journal is using traditional quotation punctuation in its flagship monthly publication, and not logical quotation. (Please see [16] and [17].) Anyone who wishes to further verify this is welcome to browse other online articles of the ABA Journal from the links provided. Dirtlawyer1 ( talk) 20:31, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
see Guillemet -- Krauss ( talk) 12:09, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
Kinda needs an explanation about how this could have occurred in the first place... Turkeyphan t 02:59, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
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While various sources lump them together and gloss over the differences, they're easily and clearly distinguishable, and have a different rationale. LQ always puts outside the final quotation mark any terminal punctuation that was not in the original source, and does not modify the quoted punctuation (except in a square-bracketed interpolation), while British (i.e. Oxford/Hart's/Fowler's) usually puts it outside, but permits exceptions for both inserting extraneous punctuation and modifying the quoted punctuation, within the quotation, if the writer feels it serves the "sense" of the sentence better. Neither are possible in logical quotation, which is always faithful to the source material. I'll source this in detail after I finish the citation digging and formatting. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 13:28, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
It wouldn't matter anyway. If we have RS that say "cars do not have truck beds" and other RS that say "pick-up trucks are like cars, but have truck beds", it doesn't matter how many sources you can find that, for whatever convenience reason they may have, lump trucks in with cars (e.g. because they're all about water vehicles and mention land vehicles in passing, as "cars", only to distinguish them from water vehicles). The fact that cars are distinguishable in reliable sources, per specific features of them, cannot be magically erased. It's perfectly fine to say that some sources lump trucks in with cars; it's not okay to say in WP's voice that trucks and cars are identical, that "car" and "truck" are two names for exactly the same thing, and deny any mention of their distinction. That's precisely what you're trying to do. We also don't need any direct-comparison sources, since the style guides publish definitions, and they're clearly distinguishable. I don't need a source that directly compares a pool ball and 1/8 ounce of cocaine, side by side, to write about how the word " 8-ball" has more than one meaning, and to write about those meanings separately, nor to prevent you from trying to change pool articles to say that the games are played with drug baggies, not balls. That's also exactly what you're trying to do here. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 02:01, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
Darkfrog24 ( talk · contribs), presently engaged in a three-day editwarring campaign at WP:MOS and WT:MOS, just deleted a reliable and properly cited source here at Quotation marks in English [19] (cite of a neutral article about logical quotation by a language professor and well-known writer on English language usage, that was used for multiple citations in the article, which DF broke by doing so), and replaced it with an anti-LQ rant from someone's blog. Classic WP:UNDUE and WP:POV. This should be reverted, but I don't want to do it myself any time soon, lest I be seen as editwarring, too. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:19, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
We're up [23]. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 11:44, 5 September 2015 (UTC)
The section on punctuation placement seems messy. A lot of that is because its current format is a compromise dating from an RfC a few years back. One solution would be to remodel this section based on Full_stop#Punctuation_styles_when_quoting, which was carefully edited earlier this year. It's clear, it covers national crossover, and it's a lot shorter (we might want to add to it a little). Thoughts? Darkfrog24 ( talk) 16:40, 30 December 2015 (UTC)
User @ Dicklyon: just added Preparing for Call Center Interviews as a source (book, 2007, by Namrata Palta, Lotus Press, New Delhi). I'm not sure it's suitable. [27] It certainly is a published book, but I think it may have been playing it fast and loose considering that punctuation is outside its expressed purview. For example, I read a statistics textbook once that said "because humans have 48 chromosomes, the number of possible genetic combinations is (exponent)," which isn't true because it neglects the process of crossing over that takes place during meiosis. The source was RS, but it wasn't right about something outside its wheelhouse. The claim that American style was established for typographical reasons, for example, is usually copied off the old version of this page, which was not at that time properly sourced (old forum post).
The text that this source was added to support was "With regard to quotation marks adjacent to periods and commas, there are two styles of punctuation in widespread use. These two styles are most commonly referred to as "American" and "British" (the latter of which is also called "logical quotation"). Both systems have the same rules regarding question marks, exclamation points, colons, and semicolons. However, they differ on the treatment of periods and commas." We can probably find many more sources that establish this.
If there is no objection, I'll remove PCCI tomorrow. If there is any objection, we'll keep talking. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 19:00, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
She still sounds amazed when she says: ‘We were turned down because “we represented too small a minority of the population”. They could still get away with saying things like that then.’
She still sounds amazed when she says: 'We were turned down because "we represented too small a minority of the population." They could still get away with saying things like that then.'In theory anyway. The internal quote doesn't actually track; it's purporting to be the expression of whoever did the turning down, but it includes the we of those who were turned down. So it would probably be
She still sounds amazed when she says: 'We were turned down because we "represented too small a minority of the population". ...'. At that point it would be a sentence fragment (albeit an almost complete one) so many British sources would then have the punctuation as
"...population".. But not all of them. Logical quotation would permit either placement, simply not falsification of period as a comma or semicolone inside the quote, if the structure were changed to something like
She says, 'We were turned down because we "represented too small a minority of the population", and still sounds amazed. 'They could still ....'A large number of British publishers would have
...population,"here just like American journalism would, and this is proof that BQ is not LQ. Of course we went over this 20 times before in every other forum, so I'm don't expect the one editor who doesn't get it to suddenly get it this time in this venue. The Guardian already told us publicly that this article is making an error on this very matter in this article several years ago, yet largely because of the FUD-injecting behavior of a single editor it's not been corrected. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 20:40, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
The CMoS is (I think we all agree) a largely reliable source when it comes to what it (among many other such works) helps define, namely the general practices of common-denominator, non-journalism, and otherwise non-specialized American publication style. It does not define, and is not a reliable source for, anything it simply glosses over or has a clear bias against, such as logical quotation, "British" (Commonwealth) styles, their definitions, and how they differ. On these matters it is vague, and vacillates between deferential and antagonistic. It defers, for three editions in a row, to The New Hacker's Dictionary, an LQ source, for "computer writing", and defers to Oxford, et al., for British styles, and to linguistics sources on linguistic use of LQ, etc., but tries in vain to convince philosophy publishers to abandon their context-specific use of LQ in their own field (which they've been using since at least the 19th c.), a matter on which CMoS is clearly a primary source of activism, not a secondary authority.
The clear problem here is in assuming that a sometimes-secondary source that is reliable for some things within its purview, is always a reliable secondary source for everything for which someone might want it to be. WP:RS doesn't work that way. It's exactly the same thing as trying to cite a zoology source that glosses over some distinctions between two species of similar plants, and conflates them in passing, as somehow more reliable on the matter than the botanical sources that define and distinguish those plants in detail as different species. It's long past time to stop persisting in this farce. It doesn't matter how much you love CMoS; there is no One World Holy Authority on English. If there were, it sure as hell wouldn't be CMoS, which is riddled with errors. Not just of interpretation but of demonstrable fact, ranging from citing sources that do not even address what CMoS cites them for, to CMoS directly contradicting itself from example to example, both in the same section. I could go on, but every second spent arguing with you feels like a waste of time. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 08:26, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
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Why is the vast majority of the talk from DarkFrog24? If that were turned down, wouldn't we have a relatively sensible situation here? Do we need all this noise? Dicklyon ( talk) 07:27, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
1 Number of edits
Come on, don't make this personal. Don't look at how many Wikipedians believe that something is sensible. Look at how many sources support it. ( WP:V) If I'm doing the work of many editors, good. Darkfrog24 ( talk) 13:28, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
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Since we're getting a little traffic on this talk page, what do you two think of this? [31] I'd have implemented it a week or so after proposing it, but by then MOS:SUPPORTS had gotten active. Now that that's died down, what do you think? Darkfrog24 ( talk) 01:03, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
I have something to ask about "Typesetters' Punctuation/Quotation.": Exactly how were those particular pieces of type possibly going to break or be damaged so easily, and what were those pieces of type even made of? Also, I am pretty sure that this article may or may not explain the origin of "Typesetters' Punctuation/Quotation.". Does it? Jim856796 ( talk) 04:31, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
I did not get from the examples and text, whether this is allowed/preferred in British quotation - the period outside the quotation:
According to the lead section, "The closing single quotation mark is identical or similar in form to the apostrophe…". No example is given, however, of a font with different glyphs for the two, nor have I ever encountered such a font. Unless someone objects, I shall delete the words "or similar".
Peter Brown ( talk) 00:46, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
I apologize for the disrespect. After starting this discussion, I found a clear statement in The Chicago Manual of Style which I cited in my edit to the article, which you have reverted. It reads, "The apostrophe is the same character as the right single quotation mark (defined for Unicode as U+2019…)." I thought this settled the matter. In turn, I complain that you should not be replacing Wikipedia text that contains a bona fide reference with contrary text that does not.
You claim that using U+0027 as a quotation mark is an error, even though is prescribed by the
Wikipedia MOS and used consistently by sources such as
Al Jazeera English. At least in Wikipedia's case, this is not a matter of convenience, since ‘
and ’
are readily available. You also complain about the fact that
MS Word uses U+2019 for the apostrophe (as does
The New York Times – see
the current front page which refers to "The Watergate class of ’74" using U+2019). Also check out
The Manchester Guardian. If a usage is widespread among reputable publications, it's doubtful that it can be called an error.
Your source is self-contradictory. It says, "A Unicode font might have several different characters for a symbol that looks like a single quote mark, but only one of them is a true single quote" and then goes on to identify both U+2018 and U+2019 as true single quotes. Peter Brown ( talk) 17:41, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
The article says:
"The typographic closing double quotation mark and the neutral double quotation mark are similar to—and sometimes stand in for—the ditto mark and the double prime symbol." (emphasis added)
If I understand correctly, that is somewhat incorrect. These are not just similar to the ditto mark; they are the ditto mark (in English). There is no separate character code provided for ditto marks in English. Is that correct? — BarrelProof ( talk) 22:58, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
@
Bazza 7: You reverted my
contribution to this article with the edit summary, that's interesting, but dealt with in the
square bracket article and off-topic here (this is an article about quotation marks in English, not
quotations)
.
But the quotations article appears to be about the linguistic phenomena of quoting; the word "typographic" appears only once in that article, but twenty-two times in this article. And this article is hardly strictly confined to the topic of quotation marks themselves but includes all manner of related information, like what key combinations to press to insert them in different operating systems, and the fact that they need to be accompanied by backslashes / escaped when nested in some programming languages.
The whole reason I ended up tracking down this information is because I came to this specific article looking for it, first, and couldn't find it, then ended up elbow-deep in the AP Stylebook before its instruction to never use square brackets (in news articles, apparently because of some twentieth-century technological problem, which I wouldn't be surprised to find is derived from telegraph encoding standard issues or something like that originally) sent me back to Wikipedia to look at the brackets article.
I hardly reproduced any of the seven-paragraph associated subsection of the brackets article; so tl;dr can we at least include a single sentence, so that someone who comes to this article looking for the same information I did—how to denote a parenthesis (rhetoric) inside quotation marks in the most orthodox fashion—can find their way there? -- ‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 13:21, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
It seems like the same sort of information as the currently-included sentence,A late-twentieth-century and twenty-first century convention is the use of square brackets to mark off words or characters between the quotation marks that were not present in the original material such as paraphrasing, changes in capitalization, non- vocable sounds in a transcription of an audio recording, etc.
Other languages use an
escape character, often the
backslash, as in 'eat \'hot\' dogs'
except that it's about punctuation used in coordination with quotation marks in English-language prose, rather than in programming languages derived from English and other human languages. --
‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡
|℡| 16:27, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
I've omitted the era when this started as a reference is needed; reinstate if you have one. Same applies if you're attached to your original suggestion. Bazza ( talk) 17:05, 30 November 2020 (UTC)A convention is the use of square brackets to indicate content between the quotation marks that has been modified from, or was not present in, the original material.
In British English these aren't even called quotation marks at all, they're called inverted commas or speech marks. I am going to remove the template, because it's easier than renaming the article and rewriting the article to use the different terms. Mvolz ( talk) 10:58, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
We have a list masquerading as reference citation, which is huge and reads:
Other style guides and reference volumes include the following: U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual (2008, p. 217), US Department of Education's IES Style Guide (2005, p. 43), The Canadian Style: A Guide to Writing and Editing (1997, p. 148), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, International Reading Association Style Guide, American Dialect Society, Association of Legal Writing Directors' ALWD Citation Manual, The McGraw-Hill Desk Reference by K. D. Sullivan (2006, p. 52), Webster's New World Punctuation by Geraldine Woods (2005, p. 68), The New Oxford Guide to Writing by Thomas S. Kane (1994, pp. 278, 305, 306), Merriam-Webster's Manual for Writers and Editors by Merriam-Webster (1998, p. 27), Simon & Schuster Handbook for Writers by Lynn Troyka, et al. (1993, p. 517), Science and Technical Writing by Philip Rubens (2001, p. 208), Health Professionals Style Manual by Shirley Fondiller and Barbara Nerone (2006, p. 72), The Gregg Reference Manual by William A. Sabin (2000, p. 247), The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation by Jane Straus(2007, p. 61), The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage by Allan M. Siegal, The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge (2004, p. 788), The Copyeditor's Handbook by Amy Einsohn (2000, p. 111), The Grammar Bible by Michael Strumpf, Auriel Douglas (2004, p. 446), Elements of Style by William Strunk and Elwyn B. White (1979, p. 36), Little English Handbook by Edward P. J. Corbett (1997, p. 135), Commonsense Grammar and Style by Phillip S. Sparks (2004, p. 18), Handbook of Technical Writing by Gerald Alred et al. (2006, pp. 83, 373), MIT Guide To Science and Engineering Communication by J. Paradis and M. L. Zimmerman (2002, p. 314), Guide to Writing Empirical Papers by G. David Garson (2002, p. 178), Modern English by A. L. Lazarus, A. MacLeish, and H. W. Smith (1971, p. 71), The Scott Foresman Handbook for Writers (8th ed.) by John Ruszkiewicz et al., Comma Sense by Richard Lederer, John Shore (2007, p. 138), Write right! by Jan Venolia (2001, p. 82), Scholastic Journalism by Earl English and Clarence Hach (1962. p. 75), Grammar in Plain English by Harriet Diamond and Phyllis Dutwin (2005, p. 199), Crimes Against the English Language by Jill Meryl Levy (2005, p. 21), The Analytical Writer by Adrienne Robins (1997, p. 524), Writing with a Purpose by James McNab McCrimmon (1973, p. 415), Writing and Reporting News by Carole Rich (2000, p. 60), The Lawyer's Guide to Writing Well by Tom Goldstein (2003, p. 163), Woodroof's Quotations, Commas And Other Things English by D. K. Woodroof (2005, pp. 10–12), Journalism Language and Expression by Sundara Rajan (2005, p. 76), The Business Writer's Handbook by Gerald Alred et al. (2006, p. 451), The Business Style Handbook by Helen Cunningham (2002, p. 213), Essentials of English by Vincent Hopper (2000, p. 127).
This material needs to be merged into List of style guides. It is neither a reference citation nor an appropriate non-citation footnote in this article. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:56, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
The usage examples section Quotation_marks_in_English#Titles_of_artistic_works states "Whether these are single or double depends on the context; however, many styles, especially for poetry, prefer the use of single quotation marks." but every example presents the use of double quotes only, leaving an unhanded exception in my understanding single quote usage.
It would be useful to provide some examples from the "many styles" or, as a last resort, dare I suggest, we request some contributions from a poet?
Also, did I miss a page level/implied reference for all this content? James Bateaux ( talk) 01:13, 27 March 2024 (UTC)