[Dixonary] Word for Round 1632: RUPICOLOUS Definitions

[Dodi Schultz]

Fran,

>> I think the period at the end of that sentence belongs before the
>> quotation marks, but that always bothers me so I ignore it.

Depends on whether you like British- or American-style punctuation.

--Dodi (formerly CompuServe's grammar/usage guru)

[Frances Wetzstein]

Aha, didn't know I had a choice. Thanks.
FW

-----Original Message-----
From: coryphaeus (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com [mailto:coryphaeus (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com] On
Behalf Of Dodi Schultz
Sent: Saturday, August 06, 2005 11:47 AM
To: coryphaeus (AT) yahoogroups (DOT) com
Subject: [Dixonary] Word for Round 1632: RUPICOLOUS Definitions



Fran,

>> I think the period at the end of that sentence belongs before the
>> quotation marks, but that always bothers me so I ignore it.

Depends on whether you like British- or American-style punctuation.

--Dodi (formerly CompuServe's grammar/usage guru)

[Paul Keating]

I agree with Dodi's statement that you have a choice of styles.

I don't agree with her characterization of "logical" punctuation as
American and "illogical but typographically pleasing" as British.

Hart's Rules, which set out the house style of the Oxford University
Press, and you can't get much more British than that, have said for at
least the last 20 years that "all signs of punctuation used with words
in quotation marks must be placed _according to the sense_. If an
extract ends with a point or exclamation or interrogation sign, let that
point be included before the closing quotation mark; but not otherwise."

Judging by (what I think are) well-printed books on my shelves, I would
say that even in Britain the points-always-inside-quotes rule began to
lose ground around 1955. Between 1945 and 1955, you must understand,
almost the only serious British books printed were from plates that
survived the bombing of London in 1940-42 (and very few of them, even,
because of paper rationing). So the change probably happened sometime
before the war.

A better pair of epithets would be traditional on the one hand, and
modern or logical or semantic or ugly on the other.

Frances Wetzstein wrote:

>Aha, didn't know I had a choice. Thanks.
>

--
Paul Keating
The Hague
52N02 4E19



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