User talk:Lottelita

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snoyes 22:45, 2 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Indeed, and welcome back. Here are some more links that I have found useful:

I often wish I could go back to my English teacher and ask her why certain rules apply. For instance, why should the comma go inside the quotes? You seem to feel that this is a good enough rule to make a change, and I'm not criticising you for doing so, but to me it just doesn't make sense. It isn't part of the quoted phrase, it's part of the rest of the sentence!

PhilHibbs 12:33, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Still figuring out this talk-page-messaging thing, so apologies.

Some grammar rules exist for clarity, others for pure aesthetics. Rules governing punctuation inside or outside of quotation marks fall into both categories. For example, the placement of a question mark inside the quotations means that the quoted material was a question; if the question mark goes outside, it means it wasn't: I love "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" vs. Do you love "Beowulf"? The comma/period rule, as far as I can tell, is just for looks; placing a comma inside or outside the quotes doesn't change the meaning. It doesn't imply that there was a comma or period there in the quoted material, as such "minor" punctuation is understood to be the quoter's. I just think periods and commas look "ugly" outside quotation marks ... and the MLA agrees with me. ;-)

Lottelita 18:34, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, you're just wrong, that's all there is to it, and so is the MLA! :-)

I think it's the programmer in me that objects to it. Computers are so much more sensible than people. PhilHibbs 12:41, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In addition, I just spotted this policy which agrees with me. Must be a lot of programmers involved in Wikipedia, I wonder why that is. PhilHibbs 13:39, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

*barf* Ah, well; at least that's a battle I can quite give up on! Lottelita 21:13, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)