English language prescriptivists are possibly the most anal-retentive and arrogant individuals in the world. They basically sit around and think of ways to tell people how they should communicate, covering absolute minutiae that are almost always completely ignored by an increasingly colloquial society. In the face of mountains of evidence that language evolves by general consensus and not top-down approval, these people hold on to the hope that they can maintain strict standards on the English language and come second only to the Catholic church in being late adopters of practices that have become mainstream without their consent.
However, if you know Grabass_Champion, you know that he has humorously rabid opinions on these very minutiae, and sometimes wishes for even more specific rules, and other times just doesn’t care. For instance, he has no problem changing perspective in the middle of a sentence but I really think there needs to be more specificity when dealing with quotes and punctuation.
Whoever makes the language decisions has determined that punctuation always goes inside quotes, but this seems like an oversimplification of the task. Quotation marks have multiple purposes (though many would argue this, it’s certainly true): to serve as a notation that someone other than the author created a clause, phrase, or sentence, or to denote a change in tone of voice or a skepticism of the veracity, accuracy, or usefulness of a word, or to set a title of a published work apart from the rest of the sentence.
Anyway, I think that when quotation marks don’t contain a full sentence or clause, the punctuation should fall outside them. Example: I read “Henry and Mudge and the Happy Cat”. Or: They call those things around her wrist “bangles”, and they denote that she’s married. Or: You know what you can shove up your ass? Your “expertise”!
Punctuation can go inside quotes when it is part of the thought inside the quotes, like “I ate a biscuit,” she said, “and it was fantastic.”
Doesn’t that make sense?
Because that’s what we need… more rules!
Fun thing to do with this article: Point out all the errors Grabass_Champion made, thereby making him a serious hypocrite for lecturing you on the fine details of the English language.
