I Remain Unconvinced and Would Like To See Sources and Methodology.
I think he is basing most/some of this on Bringhurst’s The Elements Of Typographic Style, which does go on to explain that there are a variety of recommendations in various style guides.
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I concede, I’m no match for the strategy of how to turn something fun and informative into homework.
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At last, my cunning plan has come to fruition!
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Americans do it the same way you described, just swapping the marks used
I do like how the British style implies that you need MORE quote marks the “deeper” into a quote…
He told him 'My neighbors yelled ‘‘Get out! Or as the bard wrote ‘’‘Exit, pursued by bear!’’’ ‘’ '
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Like ‘More Cowbell’?
dammit, man! that one broke my head to read!
Yes, but do periods and commas go inside or outside the quotation marks? bwahahahaha
Also I have a typographic plea to British publishers: please, please do something to differentiate titles (of books, movies, plays, etc). In the US, we italicize (italicise) them. I read reviews on The Guardian’s site, and there are so many sentences I’ve had to re-parse and parse again. And in headlines, undifferentiated titles are pure hell.
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When I started learning Russian back in '82 the used „x“. Things change, I guess. And I still use the Russian usage of putting the period outside the quotes, which is more logical to me.
In English we use the same quotation marks for denoting spoken words and for quoting text. It’s a pity that the blog author does not clarify whether all languages do the same. Maybe they didn’t even consider that other languages might distinguish between these two cases.
To me, the logical approach is: Put them inside if they were in the thing you were quoting and outside if you added them. (If the quote marks are denoting spoken words, you may need to pretend the speaker is doing the Victor Borge thing.)
My school teachers didn’t agree and gave an arbitrary set of rules that didn’t seem logical. But I’ve seen so much variation in usage I mostly do what I want.
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[titles
Do not italicise or put in quotes titles of books, films, TV programmes, paintings, songs, albums or anything else.
Words in titles take initial caps except for a, and, at, for, from, in, of, on, the, to (except in initial position or after a colon): A Tale of Two Cities, Happy End of the World, Shakespeare in Love, Superman: The Early Years, I’m in Love With the Girl on a Certain Manchester Megastore Checkout Desk, etc.
Exception: the Review and the Observer, which still italicise titles](Guardian and Observer style guide: T | | The Guardian)
The things that stand out to me are:
- Single vs. double quotes- I think the reduced character set in early computing pushed me to prefer double quotes over single ones, because they were unambiguously quotes rather than lost apostrophes. This was important when the audience for my written work was “Teachers who are still suspicious about this ‘Accepting non-handwritten work’ idea”.
- Fully or partially outward facing quotes just seem deeply wrong compared to the 66 and 99 scheme I’m used to.
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Absolutely. And that’s how it is in German. I know in American English it’s not but I, too, would be interested to know how it is in British English. I read texts from both varieties every day but I never even register details like that.
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The inclination is to keep the punctuation within the quote.
However, there is no single accepted manual of style so you will find variation; you will also find variation over different periods.
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The English language, everyone. Where we don’t have rules as such, just a giant list of exceptional cases.
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