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> Back when I was learning to write in a dark cave huddled against
> dinosaurs
> and sabertooth tigers, my teachers made a point of saying you include
> the
> punctuation inside the quotation if it is part of that phrase or
> sentence
> and outside if it has nothing to do with the quotation unless they
> would be
> the same either way.
>
> For example:
>
> 1. He said, "Let's go to the movies."
>
> 2. We should look at "Let's go to".
>
> 3. Did you hear him say "Let's go to the movies"?
>
> Obviously, if you move the question mark inside on the last one, it
> changes
> the meaning completely, as he did not say "Let's go to the movies?" but
> rather "Let's go to the movies."
>
> In 2, a period after "to" is not correct as it is not a complete
> sentence.
Those are not the same examples I use, but that's exactly the
reasoning I was taught and that I explain to anybody who
is foolish enough to listen.
But then I'm Canadian.
I daresay that some folks might pause while reading
to sneer at my (and your, and other folks') way of doing
it, but they would not fail to understand. By contrast,
doing the quote-and-punctuation thing with the punctuation
slavishly stuck inside the quotation can result in
ambiguity that:
a) need not be there and
b) wasn't originally present in whatever is being quoted.
I don't mind that English changes - that's one of its
greatest strengths - but I really, really hate when
people insist on stripping utility from my language.
-k
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