Re: Colons and Quotations in Tech Manuals

["Lin Sims" <linda -dot- sims -at- verizon -dot- net>]

Two sources, one 'American' and one British.

>From The Jargon File, "Hacker Writing Style" 
(http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/Hacker-Writing-Style.html):

    Hackers tend to use quotes as balanced delimiters like 
    parentheses, much to the dismay of American editors. Thus, if 
    "Jim is going" is a phrase, and so are "Bill runs" and
    "Spock groks", then hackers generally prefer to write: "Jim is 
    going", "Bill runs", and "Spock groks". This is incorrect 
    according to standard American usage (which would
    put the continuation commas and the final period inside the 
    string quotes); however, it is counter-intuitive to hackers to 
    mutilate literal strings with characters that don't
    belong in them. Given the sorts of examples that can come up 
    in discussions of programming, American-style quoting can 
    even be grossly misleading. . . .
    
    Interestingly, a similar style is now preferred practice in Great 
    Britain, though the older style (which became established for 
    typographical reasons having to do with the
    aesthetics of comma and quotes in typeset text) is still 
    accepted there. "Hart's Rules" and the "Oxford Dictionary for 
    Writers and Editors" call the hacker-like style `new'
    or `logical' quoting. This returns British English to the style 
    Latin languages (including Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan) 
    have been using all along. 

British, from _The Oxford Guide to English Usage_:

    The closing quotation mark should come before all punctuation 
    marks unless these form part of the quotation itself . . .
    
I use this convention myself because I have frequent code 
fragments in my documentation, and those extra pieces of 
punctuation can cause interesting problems if take as a literal part 
of a string rather than as a mark of punctuation.

On 8 Jun 2001, at 12:12, baotong.gu.1 wrote:

> Hi, Isis,
> 
> I'm not sure if you will ever be able to find answers to your
> questions in any book. I'm saying this because this question has come
> up more than once in my editing class, and I've looked at all sources
> I could get my hands on but have never seen it addressed anywhere.
> 
> This is what I usually tell my students (based on a review of related
> rules from various sources):
> 
> Yes, grammar books and style guides tell you that the colon should be
> placed outside the quotation marks. However, this only applies to
> cases where the colon belongs to the whole sentence, not the quoted
> material. In your case, since the colon is part of what is displayed
> on the screen, I would definitely include it within the quotation
> marks.
> 
> As for the period, normally if there's already a punctuation mark
> (such as a colon, a semicolon, a question mark, etc.) within the
> quotation mark, there's no need to add another period to the sentence
> even though the meaning and structure of the sentence may seem to call
> for one.
> 
> Sorry I can't offer any book titles that would back up my claims,
> although the part about the period can be confirmed by several sources
> (Chicago Manual of Style, for one, has some discussion on this).
> 
> Not sure if this will be of any help to you in winning your case with
> your supervisor. Just my 2c.
Lin

Knowledge is Power.
Power Corrupts.
Study Hard. Be Evil.

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