Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!pacbell!ames!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!ukc!warwick!anduk!lee
From: lee@anduk.co.uk (Liam R. Quin)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: em-dashes, ellipsis and English Usage (long)
Summary: you can choose where to put punctuation
Message-ID: <32@nx32s.anduk.co.uk>
Date: 8 Aug 89 18:39:52 GMT
References: <65590@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <65736@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <28@nx32s.anduk.co.uk> <1188@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu> <30@nx32s.anduk.co.uk> <1128@sas.UUCP>
Reply-To: lee@nx32s.UUCP (0000-Liam R. Quin)
Organization: Unixsys (UK) Ltd, Warrington, England
Lines: 34

In article <1128@sas.UUCP> bts@sas.UUCP (Brian T. Schellenberger) writes:
>In article <30@nx32s.anduk.co.uk> I wrote:
>||    These writers are sometimes known as `the Romantics'.

>It should be noted, however, that American usage is to place periods inside
>the quotes even if they represent the outside sentence.
This is widespread.  The cited example is particularly pendantic, I think.

This is a *typographical* convention, however, not a copy preparation
one.  If you submit a typed manuscript (`copy') to a publisher, you
should either check with them, or use the more pedantic style.
That way, if they want to set your book in the `British Standard' style,
they will be able to do so.

> This is [...] in my opinion, more pleasing to the eye.
> (With most fonts--it looks horrid, actually, with vertical quote marks.)
I would tend to agree.  Another alternative I have sometimes seen is to
set the . as if it had less width than usual.
In troff/TeX/... terms, one might have a kern pair for . ' so that the
two nearly overlap.  Or, in troff, you could try this\z.'

One of the books on my desk (John Sculley/Odyssey) uses the BSI method,
though, putting the full point after the quote when the quoted text
at the end of the sentence is not itself a complete sentence.

It's really only an issue with marks like ?, ! and ), I think.

Lee

-- 
Lee Russell Quin, Unixsys UK Ltd, The Genesis Centre, Birchwood,
Warrington, ENGLAND, WA3 7BH; Tel. +44 925 828181, Fax +44 925 827834
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