More completely lame crap to skip over...Re: Language and English

On Sat, 5 Jan 2002, Clint Wolff (VAX collector) wrote: The main purpose of the period is to denote the end of a declarative or imperative sentence (i.e., a statement or an order). Within a quotation lies another context, one which could be different from that of the containing sentence. Having only one place to put punctuation creates ambiguity, and putting the punctuation *inside* the quotation makes the situation worse. For example, in "proper" American English: Jamie asked, "Where are the toys?" Now, which does this mean? Jamie asked, "Where are the toys?". Jamie asked, "Where are the toys?"? In the first case, the author is stating that Jamie asked a question. In the second, the author is asking if Jamie asked a question. These are two very different meanings, and "proper" punctuation has no way to distinguish between the two meanings. Here is a slightly more complicated example: Jamie said, "Jason said, 'What the hell!'" Now, which does this mean? Jamie said, "Jason said, 'What the hell!'.". Jamie said, "Jason said, 'What the hell!'."? Jamie said, "Jason said, 'What the hell!'?". Jamie said, "Jason said, 'What the hell!'?"? Jamie said, "Hello, world." is quite like printf("Hello, world);" Personally, I use a writing style reminiscent of that described in the Jargon File. http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/Hacker-Writing-Style.html -- Jeffrey S. Sharp jss(a)subatomix.com