punctuating quoted language

[jutfrank]

With the simple aim of hearing members' thoughts and practices on the issue, I'd like to discuss punctuating quoted language—an issue which crops up quite regularly on the forum, and on which members seem to have quite firm and occasionally conflicting positions.

Here's a post by Piscean today:

There are no universally accepted rules on punctuation for quotation. What follows is how I punctuate.

Only sentence-ending punctuation:

He wrote "I should go".
Did he write "I should go"?

Sentence-ending and quotation-ending punctuation:

He wrote "Should I go?".
Did he write "Should I go?"?

Somebody looking for patterns/rules of usage might wonder why the quoted question Should I go? includes sentence-ending punctuation as part of the quote (quite rightly) while the quoted statement (I should go.) does not.

For the sake of both consistency and clarity, shouldn't we write:

He wrote "I should go.".

Is there any reason (other than convention) why not to include the quotation-ending punctuation? (We assume of course that the period is in fact quotation-ending.)

What do you all think?

 

[jutfrank]

Piscean—thanks for your answer.

Just one question—what did you mean here?:

Yes, though I would make the final quotation mark there a question mark.

 

[Tdol]

I think it is an area where people may use their gut instinct rather than absolute science.

 

[jutfrank]

You asked a question ...

Oops—missed that. (Tricky thing, this punctuation malarkey!)


What do others think on this issue? emsr2d2? GoesStation? teechar?

 

[jutfrank]

I think it is an area where people may use their gut instinct rather than absolute science.

What if their gut instinct is no good?

 

[emsr2d2]

For the sake of both consistency and clarity, shouldn't we write (no colon here) He wrote "I should go"?

Above is how I would have written the relevant sentence in post #1.

 

[jutfrank]

For the sake of both consistency and clarity, shouldn't we write (no colon here) He wrote "I should go"?

Above is how I would have written the relevant sentence in post #1.

I was just asking for your input on the question in the OP, not how to present it. But thanks anyway.

Obviously, adding a question mark immediately after the language which for visual clarity I was trying to isolate would have been completely counterproductive. The mistake arose from my decision to split the question up with line breaks, and then not reading it back carefully enough. In the past I may have presented it like this:

For the sake of both consistency and clarity, shouldn't we write:

He wrote "I should go.".

?

One of the challenges raised by writing posts on this particular forum (for teachers and learners alike) is how to clearly embed language inside language, which is conveniently germane to the main point of this thread.