Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American

As a programmer, I’d prefer a combination of the two:<p><i>Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus.”.</i><p>as I think it’s weird that a punctuation mark inside a quote can end the sentence that contains the quote.<p>I’d argue like this: in the above case there are two sentences, the quote and the sentence that contains the quote. Both need to be terminated with a period.

I got in a heated debate about this with a technical writing instructor. Namely, I was ending a question with a quote along the lines of<p>&gt; Why did Jake believe the AI was “going to kill us all”?<p>The instructor wanted me to put the question mark of the outer sentence within the quotation marks despite the quoted text not containing a question mark.<p>&gt; Why did Jake believe the AI was “going to kill us all?”<p>I felt like doing so changed the meaning of the quote, and it felt like a misrepresentation. This being the “correct” way to do it has always irritated me.<p>I ended up rewording the sentence so it wouldn’t end with the quotation, and have just actively avoided ending sentences in quotes ever since.

<i>Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like parentheses, much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if “Jim is going” is a phrase, and so are “Bill runs” and “Spock groks”, then hackers generally prefer to write: “Jim is going”, “Bill runs”, and “Spock groks”. This is incorrect according to standard American usage (which would put the continuation commas and the final period inside the string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate literal strings with characters that don&#x27;t belong in them. Given the sorts of examples that can come up in discussions of programming, American-style quoting can even be grossly misleading. When communicating command lines or small pieces of code, extra characters can be a real pain in the neck.</i><p>— <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.catb.org&#x2F;~esr&#x2F;jargon&#x2F;html&#x2F;writing-style.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.catb.org&#x2F;~esr&#x2F;jargon&#x2F;html&#x2F;writing-style.html</a>

The real answer is to use the British style but then combine the &quot; and . into a ligature in the font so that it looks nicer like the American style. Simple!<p>edit: Just searched and there are some people doing exactly this with negative kerning:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tex.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;369077&#x2F;overlapping-quotes-with-periods-and-commas#369110" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tex.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;369077&#x2F;overlapping-q...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tex.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;202799&#x2F;how-can-i-typeset-a-quote-directly-above-a-period" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tex.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;202799&#x2F;how-can-i-typ...</a>

I think, given that this is just <i>some guy’s opinion</i> (it’s not like this is someone who has a job as a professional copyeditor or publisher of a respected style guide), the only real takeaway most people should take from this is:<p>There are various conventions you can adopt around quoted punctuation<p>You, as an individual writer of English prose, have the option of adopting a style you prefer<p>It’s okay for reasonable people to disagree about that

Another stupid detail like this that immediately tells you that text is from America is the capitalisation of every word in a title. Compare the front page of the NY Times with the front pages from any other English speaking country and you see the contrast. I didn&#x27;t check, but I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if the Canadians go both ways at random ;-)

I was typing out an explanation&#x2F;justification to the effect that when speaking aloud, the punctuation at the end of the sentence is &#x27;heard&#x27; in the last word, even if the word is quoted. We insert a pause before the start of the quote to indicate it was direct, but there isn&#x27;t a way of indicating whether, say, a question mark belongs inside or outside the quotation.<p>But then I sounded out some examples in my head and realised it would be totally obvious. The inflection of the question is apparent from the beginning of the fragment (¿), not just from the inflection on the last word. I knew this already, of course, but I didn&#x27;t really <i>grok</i> it, I guess because of the limitations of how we write out punctuation in English.

This is indeed annoying and illogical when learning english, especially because other languages get it right.<p>The french have a different speciality: punctuation marks that consist of two parts(i.e. ? ! ; :) are preceded by a space character. Also very irritating.

&gt; There is no reason that there should be two different approaches to punctuation in the English language.<p>That&#x27;s the typical answer a programmer would give. A linguist, or really any kind of sociologist, would rather say:<p>&gt; There is no reason that there should be a single approach to punctuation in the English language.

I think the example sentence contains the worst corner-case of such a system. In general, the . at the end of sentence is the least necessary punctuation mark, and quotations of neutral statements should just always omit it.<p>For example, &quot;this is how a neutral sentence should look like&quot;, I would say. I don&#x27;t think &quot;they saw a vase.&quot; looks good even in the middle of a sentence. However, &quot;do I have a question?&quot;, or &quot;I am exclaiming something!&quot; do need their punctuation to make sense. Now, it&#x27;s more ugly when you finish a neutral sentence a quote like &quot;I am surprised!&quot;.<p>Of course, there will be cases, especially in literature, where the . will actually add something to the emphasis of a quote. For example, &quot;I have said it all.&quot; could be used to emphasize the period itself - but in those cases, jarring punctuation like `.&quot;.` or `.&quot;,` would actually help to emphasize the importance of the period.

I genuinely love how American, Australian, and British, English all differ in these subtle ways. I think another example that gets me is: `e.g.` vs `e.g.,` MS Word favours the `e.g.,` which I never see in Australian English.

&gt; <i>In the American style, you almost always put periods and commas inside the quotation marks</i><p>American here. I never put periods in the quotes unless the text within the quotes is a full sentence. I also had no idea there was an American or British style regarding quotes.

&gt; There is no reason that there should be two different approaches to punctuation in the English language.<p>Why not? We have different vocabulary, different spelling. Our accents are sufficiently different that non-native speakers can&#x27;t always understand both.<p>So serious question - why wouldn&#x27;t punctuation also differ?

I&#x27;m going to be entirely honest, this seems like a complete waste of time for everyone involved. The point of writing is to communicate, and I don&#x27;t see how the position of punctuation in relation to quotation marks affects the understanding of the communication to the reader. Just pick one and stick with it.

&gt; There is no reason that there should be two different approaches to punctuation in the English language.<p>If you want to go that route, there&#x27;s no reason for there to be more than one language on Earth.<p>Any attempt to research linguistics should respect the fact that people <i>want</i> to be different from each other, and see that as a valid reason.

I tried to implement some linting rules for quotation mark and punctuation once. Took me way too much time and effort. It&#x27;s mostly trial and error but good enough I guess to highlight the most blatant abuses.<p>Anyway, here is the code: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sindresorhus&#x2F;awesome-lint&#x2F;pull&#x2F;101&#x2F;files" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sindresorhus&#x2F;awesome-lint&#x2F;pull&#x2F;101&#x2F;files</a>

US style is &#x27;wrong&#x27; because it requires one to modify the original quote by adding punctuation within the quotes which delineate the quotation.

The reason this problem exists is because computers and font libraries don&#x27;t have all the characters we need. The point or comma should be <i>at the same place</i> as the quotes, under them, not before or after.

<i>Politics and the English Language</i>[0] has this covered, though not directly referencing punctuation; <i>&quot;vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous&quot;.</i><p>[0]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Politics_and_the_English_Language" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Politics_and_the_English_Langu...</a>

I think the argument for the American style is aesthetics. I don&#x27;t like it, but I can understand that there are people who prefer what looks better. TFA did not address this at all, which is a pity.

I switch between the american style for persuasion, and the british style for precision. Am also Canadian, so a metanational approach is normal here. I also keep copies of the Chicago Manual and Strunk &amp; White, which are useful for knowing which rules to break. Ain&#x27;t never had much of a problem, consequently.

Eh, worrying much about this stuff is fairly pointless. It’s not like there’s a rules committee we can petition.<p>I do use the British style when I can get away with it, but for anything formal or important I just suck it up and do it the way it’s supposed to be done.<p>Anyway, if I could change rules of English, this wouldn’t be that high a priority.

I was taught the American way (as I live in the US), but immediately rejected it (even at a young age) and did it the British way, though I had no idea that&#x27;s what it was called. Besides the week or so when teachers were covering that in their syllabus, nobody <i>ever</i> complained or noted it at all :)

Which makes no sense IMHO is to use “” instead of &quot;&quot;. But it could be my OCD also.

This makes sense to me and looks good. Some other quote style ideas:<p>- use double quotes when quoting something someone said or wrote; use single quotes when emphasizing a jargony word or words, or a short paraphrase (e.g. &#x27;materialist philosophy&#x27;).<p>- use double quotes for &quot;scare quotes&quot; because the doubling acts as emphasis markers and is pantomimable with two fingers (one-fingered air-quotes look ridiculous).<p>- use double quotes around single quotes when nesting quotes. Avoid nesting more than one level of quotes.

I thought there was a generally accepted way of signaling that a quote is incomplete - by using [...]. For example:<p>&quot;[...] the first game was better, but not in a good way&quot;<p>There&#x27;s no need to use the full stop inside the quote to show that the sentence had ended. That can be the default, because most time it doesn&#x27;t matter, but in the cases where it is relevant to show that there&#x27;s content after, then why not:<p>&quot;I thought the first game was better [...]&quot;

Is this just a version of &quot;Prefer tabs over spaces when writing code&quot;? Because if so, I already know the outcome of this debate.

I found this out years ago, and adopted the British style. It makes way more sense and reads better.<p>I&#x27;ll also put in my two cents here about spaces after a period. I always use two spaces after a sentence and one after an abbreviation.<p>If you only ever use one, there is too much ambiguity around sentences that end with an abbreviation.

This style of punctuation is &quot;logical quotation&quot;, not necessarily British: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikipedia:Logical_quotation_on_Wikipedia" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikipedia:Logical_quotation_on...</a>

Orthography in specific and natural language in general (formalized and written, or otherwise) is not beholden to be &quot;logical;&quot;<p>idiosyncratic deviance from established cultural norms looks adolescent in anything other than a private subculture.<p>Specifically in American English, which unlike French French or German German, does not have a state-sanctioned standards body attempting (and often failing) to police or mandate its evolution.<p>Earnest advice for those tempted to adopt &quot;logical&quot; style in American English language written communication: adhere to the standards.<p>Relevant: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;Item&#x2F;Ruzvelt%20Sez%20Spel%20Az%20Yu%20Pleez" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;Item&#x2F;Ruzvelt%20...</a>

For some reason, in school in Britain in the 1980s, we were taught rather religiously to always end anything inside speech marks with a comma. I&#x27;m not sure where this style comes from, but it confused me terribly and took me years to correct.

I didn’t know these different styles were actual idioms, or that one is “American” and the other “British”.<p>I’ve just always been unsure.<p>Now I’ve learned through this discussion that there is no definitive way, I feel freer to play it by ear and write what feels right at the time.

The linked article correctly uses &quot;British&quot; to denote the style of punctuation, I do not understand why OP decided to use &quot;English&quot; which implies that people in Scotland and Northern Ireland might punctuate differently.

Does anyone have any thoughts on date formats? E.g. d&#x2F;m&#x2F;y vs. m&#x2F;d&#x2F;y?

I imagine it depends on what you are trying to say...<p>He said, &quot;Will you?&quot; I said, &quot;No!&quot;<p>He said, &quot;Will you&quot;? I said, &quot;No&quot;!<p>He said, &quot;Will you?&quot;. I said, &quot;No!&quot;.<p>He said, &quot;Will you?&quot;!? I said, &quot;No!&quot; ;)

Agree with the post; interestingly, in grade school (here in America) I was actually taught both ways depending on the teacher&#x27;s preference &#x2F; belief (assuming we were not writing MLA research papers)... this mostly led to perpetual confusion, so we&#x27;d often just put the period directly under the quotation. (Of course, couldn&#x27;t do that for typed assignments.) I remember one of my English teachers accepting both ways because she could never keep it straight herself.

I&#x27;m an American and was taught the British Style as correct US English. I didn&#x27;t realize there were different styles - I just figured some folks got it wrong sometimes.

I’m not aware of the punctuation mark going outside the quotation being, “British style,” and I’m struggling to find other references to it being so. It’s certainly not what is done in most British typography.<p>Putting the punctuation mark inside the quotation marks has been a thing ever since printing, and I always thought it was done to avoid have an isolated full stop on a printing plate, which could be damaged relatively easily., but this may be a retroactive justification.

I grew up in the United States and was taught that which is referred to here as the “British style”; not sure where this notion of an “American style” originated.

The first time I read a book in English, I thought the quotation mark after the dot was a typo&#x2F;syntax error (it didn&#x27;t parse correctly, and it made no sense to me).<p>After so many instances of the exact same typo in the book, I thought the author&#x2F;editor had a specific problem with ordering quotation marks and dots.<p>It&#x27;s only when I read another English book with the same &quot;syntax error&quot; that I realized that it was not a bug in English.

What is described as the American style seems weird and never came into my mind. If I would ever stumble upon such a style I would think it&#x27;s a typo.

My first association: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;541&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xkcd.com&#x2F;541&#x2F;</a><p>This is very emotional because we start when being 6 and as such, for many years, you are exposed to only <i>one</i> way to quote or put spaces around punctuation.<p>I am French, living in Germany and working in English 50% of the time. It is interesting that it is only after maybe 15 years outside of France that now my <i>feeling</i> for what is the right way in one language matches the rules. For example:<p><pre><code> - How do you do? - Comment allez-vous ? </code></pre> Notice the space before the question mark in French. For me, now, it feels right for both, for a long time this was not the case.

I am American and can&#x27;t help but wonder if this is a subtle British joke. This is just poor grammar based on how I was taught, so perhaps some Brits think it&#x27;s cheeky to call it &quot;American Style&quot;, like an American calling a dull stick a &quot;British toothbrush&quot;. If so, well played. If not, no harm done, just don&#x27;t use &quot;American Style&quot;.

I think they messed up; the first sentences of each of the first two examples are identical apart from the reference.<p>&gt; Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus.”[1] and<p>&gt; Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus.”[3]<p>Second one should be:<p>Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus”.[3]

If you were surprised that someone calmly said, &quot;I can&#x27;t do that,&quot; how would you write it?<p>This would not convey the correct meaning: She said, &quot;I can&#x27;t do that!&quot;<p>This looks incorrect: She said, &quot;I can&#x27;t do that&quot;!<p>This looks incorrect as well: She said, &quot;I can&#x27;t do that.&quot;!

Logical aspirations aside, punctuation is largely meant to aid in reading.<p>While some marks provide emphasis, most (other than suggesting connectivity) denote a length of pause.<p>Punctuation (or lack thereof) that pulls you out of the flow of the reading is, IMHO, really not in the spirit of things ;)

Learning English I found American quotation style very weird. It would be interesing to know if any nother language do something like this and where this traidition comes from. We certainly do not do this in russian and ukrainian I&#x27;ve learned in school.

Don&#x27;t expect natural language to logically &quot;make sense&quot;. Just don&#x27;t. It doesn&#x27;t work by those rules, and trying to force it to do so just leads to seventeenth-century grammarian jackasses and Strunk and White.

The British style works best with the Penguin style of using single quotes for the outer level of quotation rather than double quotes. Part of the reason we write “this.” is for esthetics. Compare:<p>“this.”<p>“this”.<p>‘this’.<p>The middle version looks objectively worse than the first or last.

Call it &quot;logical quotation&quot; vs &quot;typesetter&#x27;s quotation&quot;.<p>The American&#x2F;British dividing line is extremely hazy, and only really cements the typesetter&#x27;s quotations in the minds of Americans.

Somewhat related — in my experience reading news articles online, it seems like more and more often I’m seeing the period migrate outside parentheses for full sentences. Has anyone else noticed this trend?

The American version is often a simplification of the British version. I also find the American version to be more readable. Simpler, easier to use syntax seems preferable to me over verbose style.

The article is written by a German who probably learned British English, so in effect this is some guy telling people they should write in the way OP learned to write?<p>How did this make it to the front page of HN?

Interesting. I&#x27;ve always used the &#x27;British Style&#x27;, but in a mid-90s junior school in Scotland I was taught to always end quotations with punctuation. I guess I just rebelled.

I also prefer the common British use of commas over the oxford comma

I think the solution is to always add just a few more words at the end of a sentence:<p>&gt; Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus.” and then said no more.

As a programmer I prefer to avoid the semicolon cancer, so I think best is to get rid of the final period.<p>&gt; Dr Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus”

OP: When in Rome, do as the Greeks do because their way is better.

Im not someone with strong opinions on this sort of thing, but it has never made sense to me that I’d put a period inside quotation marks if it isn’t a part of the quote.

It high school I got yelled at when I put the period before the final quote mark. In college I got yelled at when I did the opposite. Both seem completely arbitrary.

Sorry, but I prefer less rules over more rules unless they provide some tangible benefit. This is just rules for the sake of rules.

Teach an elementary school kid yet another wrinkle in the English language around where they should punctuation marks? No thanks.

Putting the period or comma within quotes (the US style) is like tucking your shirt in and then leaving a small part of it out.

Agreed. Unfortunately, I don&#x27;t often see examples of a language evolving on suggestion - even reasonable suggestion.

Lovely, the grammatical equivalent of where we put our braces, same-line vs new-line :-)

100% agree.

The American style is like putting closing bracket at the wrong indentation.

It is classic HN that this is one of the most active posts of the week!

About as good as I can think of a perfect example of a first world problem.

Prefer the hackerly style of quotation punctuation: the period ends the sentence:<p>&gt; Dr. Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus”.<p>This is one big sentence which contains an embedded quote. The period ends that big sentence.<p>The quote contains a complete sentence. Therefore, arguably, it deserves its own period.<p>&gt; Dr. Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “I refute it thus.”.<p>So this matter revolves around the idea that we want only one period, and so the question is which of these two periods do we elide.<p>I&#x27;m arguing that if we are going to elide, the one we should elide is the inner one, because it&#x27;s of less importance. Eliding the outer one leaves the entire sentence unterminated, whereas the quote is obviously terminated by the closing quote.<p>(What is the sentence period for? It&#x27;s for indicating where sentences end, so that the reader doesn&#x27;t get confused parsing the end of one sentence together with the start of the next one. A closing quote has a solid end indicator already.)<p>If there are multiple quoted sentences, then those except the last preserve their terminating punctuator:<p>&gt; Dr. Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “How shall I refute it? Ah, I refute it thus”.<p>What if the quoted sentence ends in a terminator different from the one of the embedding clause? Then we cannot elide either one:<p>&gt; Dr. Johnson kicked a large rock and said, as his foot rebounded, “How shall I refute it?”.<p>Except if the inner one is a period. We can establish the convention that a missing punctuator inside a quote is an implied period (if the quote is obviously a complete clause):<p>&gt; Did Dr. Johnson really say “I refute it thus”?<p>Something like that. We should strive, in some halfway rational way, not to leave the overall sentence without terminating punctuation.<p>(I do not agree that .&quot;. has a <i>redundant</i> period. Two different sentences are ending, using their own punctuation marks which are not related, and could potentially be different. I agree that it&#x27;s ugly. Eliding the inner period is not the same as eliminating it; we are making it <i>implied</i>. Something implied is still semantically there, just not as a visible syntactic token.)<p>Note that whatever.&quot; does not indicate the end of a sentence; it can plausibly continue:<p>&gt; Dr. Johnson said &quot;I refute it thus.&quot; and kicked the rock.<p>As soon as we have additional words after the quote, we have two periods unless we elide one. In this case, we definitely must not elide the one after &quot;rock&quot;. Whereas eliding the quoted one according to the hackerly style leaves a clean result:<p>&gt; Dr. Johnson said &quot;I refute it thus&quot; and kicked the rock.

The only reason the &quot;American style&quot; exists is a technical workaround: It was easier to damage the expensive lead type used in print shops a century ago if the thin period character was used on the end of the line, rather than the thicker, sturdier quotation mark, so they were swapped as a cost-saving measure.<p>None of this has been relevant for many decades, and people have forgotten the reason for this rule. It was never correct to do, it was a choice to do it the wrong way around out of convenience.

No. I will use a Nations’s preferred punctuation. To do otherwise is rude and inconsiderate.

Grownups don&#x27;t worry about this stuff. Just like they don&#x27;t worry about which programming language style guide to use.<p>If you&#x27;re writing for an American audience, use American style. If you&#x27;re writing for a British audience, use British style. If you&#x27;re writing a journal article, or for a business, use whatever style everyone else there uses. If you&#x27;re writing for yourself, use what you like.