do those sound the same to you? say them out loud and try to isolate the vowel - if they sound the same to you then I dunno what to say

Every student paper I have ever graded has this mistake in it:

"Picasso once said, "turn it up to eleven".

Punctuation goes INSIDE the quotation mark, dammit. Almost ALWAYS.

Correct:

“Knowledge is power,” wrote Francis Bacon.

The only time it doesn't is when you use a semi-colon after someone has spoken - a rather rare occurrence:

The professor said, “Study hard”; then he dismissed us.

I have a personal objection to that rule that I'm not sure is 'correct' or not, but is so much better in terms of clarity that I always do it. It usually comes up when I'm asking a question about a quoted statement, for example:

Why does Han Solo say, "Never tell me the odds"?

What's the correct way of punctuating that sentence?

edit: actually your second example is a good example - I understand that what you wrote is "correct", but it makes way more sense to me to put the comma on the outside, so that it becomes clear that his statement was a complete thought. One of the dumbest rules out there imo.

"I could jump on that bandwagon", I thought aloud while reading that post.

In your example, you correctly have the question mark outside the quotation marks because you--not Han--is the one asking a question. Compare with The boy raised his hand when the teacher asked "Does anyone know the answer?"

Dom, I'm pretty sure that the quotation marks/punctuation discussion already occurred earlier in this thread. The two styles are known as British and American styles. I, like NHFunkii, prefer the British style. Here's an excerpt from wikipedia:

could non-native speakers please quit using "whilst" and "amongst" (at least in america)?

Not only is this post entirely American-centric (as already mentioned, British rules are different--more common sense, but requiring more judgement to apply--and Canadians follow either practice) but it is also wrong, even in terms of American rules. The colon as well as the semicolon goes outside quotation marks. (Neither occurrence strikes me as all that rare.)

And, as already pointed out, the question mark, and, I would add, the exclamation mark, go outside, unless part of the original quotation.

However (and ignoring his own problem with anomalous quotation marks in his first example), Dominic is quite right to say that his first example is wrong:

Picasso once said, "turn it up to eleven".

It is wrong following either British or American rules because "turn it up to eleven" is an independent clause, complete in itself, meaning that the comma should be placed inside the quotation marks.

Of course, as such, that sentence should probably read:

Picasso once said, "Turn it up to eleven."

But that opens up a larger issue, best ignored for now. ...

Punctuation rules are not my particular field of expertise, but I think that there is an extra quotation mark at the start of the first example. Is that what you are getting at? From the following arguments it seems like it's not, so I am not sure.

Secondly, if the rule is

Shouldn't the comma after "The professor said" in the first example be inside the quotation marks? I think you were refering to the full stop at the end of the first example, but in the spirit of this thread I thought I had to point out that your explanation is not entirely consistent.


OT: This is still my favorite thread title in all of 2+2.

PS Any mistakes in this post can be attributed to my inferior command of the English language. As a foreigner I get the get-out-of-jail-free card on this one.

Re punctuation coming inside the quotation marks: as others have noted, almost completely split between American and British treatments. But not completely split: some Americans choose the British method, viewing it as more logical. I have never encountered a Brit preferring the American approach.

Someone already quoted wikipedia to the effect that either way works. Correct, but there's more: wikipedia itself, which probably has more American than British editors, has a mild preference for the British way:
(Wikipedia Manual of Style, section 8.2.1)

(Note: I say it's a "mild" preference because the MoS goes on to state that using the rule does not reflect a preference with respect to punctuation, but rather the principle that they should make minimal changes to quoted material — but in fact using the method they do does constitute a choice, one they seem slightly to be ducking.)

I'm American, and I employ the British method in all writing.

Seems odd to me — not only don't I say it with a schwa (my accent is primarily northern midwestern US, with bits and pieces from other parts of the country), I'm not sure I've heard anyone else do it either. In British English it's a rounder sound, and in Texas it would be more frontal but longer than a schwa. Maybe New England, but idk.


Edit to say: This is a pretty subtle distinction, and it could hinge on different, and perhaps changing, understanding of what the different sound symbols actually symbolize. In fact, it makes me wonder whether there has been a drift over the years in our understanding of what certain vowel symbols mean — because it's almost impossible for there not to have been such a change.

And afterwards, we could deal with "amidst."

Some of you guys might enjoy this. You can skim the initial sea of fragments and start reading at this line:

edit: Iirc, it's "nearly Lewinskian scale" in the original version.

I remember reading that article for a writing class freshman year, in fact it's the only thing I remember from that class. my favorite part, which was pretty eye opening for me:

Someone should start a thread titled: Usage and Style nits unite together! Your head will most certainly literally explode apart.

That's quite a well-written essay (though I take issue with a couple of his own constructions and usages). Too, the compilation of assorted malapropisms and other common linguistic travesties is quite fun, even if I have to admit I didn't read the entire list.

I've had to give a speech similar to the one quoted in 1965, to an LSAT class at a historically (and still) black college. It was slightly awkward, but there are ways to smooth such things.

The essay reminded me of a usage question I've wondered about: has got. The author, like some other educated writers and almost every uneducated one, uses the construction "has got" to mean "has" (and "have got" to mean "have"). I would pretty much rather have my eyes put out than be forced to say that someone "has got" something, but it crops up enough that I've come to wonder just how acceptable it is — and if, as seems to be the case, it's really quite acceptable, I wonder what charcterizes the subset of writers and speakers who eschew the construction. (Surely it's not just me...)

Accordingly: What say you, OOTian nits? The sentence "I have got a lot of work to do" is:

• appalling
• acceptable if informal
• perfectly normal in all contexts
• the only correct way to say it

[*]acceptable if informal

95% of the time I've ever seen (or heard) that construction it was apostrophic (e.g. "I've got a fish.")¹, which, to me, sounds so much better. Maybe it's just an idiosyncrasy of my perception. Idk, without contraction, it's terrible (it sounds alien and I had to spend a few seconds parsing it), and with it, it's acceptable if informal (or if the writer can elegantly wield colloquial prose).

¹ I guess one of the nice things about spoken English is that anyone prim enough to never contract anything is probably never ever ever using "have got" or "has got." (These are the same people who never drop the letter g and greet people by saying "good day, sir.")

Does anyone ever use it that way? It seems to me that a contraction is used when saying it - "I've got a lot of work to do."

I think I've mentioned this once in this thread already, but I highly recommend Garner's A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (the book reviewed in the DFW essay posted above) for anyone that cares about writing. If you have a question about writing, chances are it's answered in ADMAU.

I probably should have written it that way. Still, it's not always following a contraction: I think there's at least one 2p2 book in which I've been annoyed to find repeated uses of constructions along the lines of "... and what have you got?"

Actually, as I think more about it I realize there are two different usages of "have/has got" that I notice:

1. "have got" in place of "got", as detailed above.
2. "got" where I would say "gotten", as a present participle.

I think the latter is a US/Britain thing (Brits seem rarely or never to use gotten); I've always had the sense that the former is to some extent as well.

Edit: Found this:

Oh, that quote reminds me of the third use of "have got" that strikes me: "have got to" to mean "must".

Occasionally I find these "have got" constructions slipping into my own speech (though certainly never my writing), and I always want to hit myself when it happens. Maybe I ought to relax about it, but I don't intend to. Anyone here is hereby urged to slap me if he hears me utter the phrase in even the least formal context.

Never drop the g from what?

you've just gotta get over it