I'm warming up to the standard punctuation form of the period being enclosed within a direct quote, as in:
"This is what he said."
... as opposed to
"This is what he said".
For many years I opted for the latter simply because it made more syntactical sense, coming from a computer programming background. I now understand that, if one is to quote someone directly, the statement, as a whole, should be completely enclosed within the quotes.
Somewhere, E.B. White is giggling to himself and high-fiving some supernatural form of Strunk. But then "that's what they said.".
Monday, June 18, 2012
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2 comments:
The period after the closing quote is unnecessary if there is already an ending punctuation within the quote. :- )
Christ, why doesn't anyone get the joke?
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