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Richard Hamilton asked about Punctuation in quotes -- American style
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Historically, the edict decreeing that all punctuation be placed inside of
quotation marks was decreed not by grammarians but by America's newspaper
typesetters (which probably predated the AP Style Guide). When every
character and punctuation mark (of 10-pt newsprint type) was on a separate
piece of lead, punctuation marks after quotation marks tended to get lost,
so the typesetters made sure they were inside the quotes, whether that was
logically or grammatically correct or not.
So, since now we do everything with computers, and the size of the
punctuation marks in lead type is no longer an issue, I think we should
punctuate according to the sense of the sentence, rather than for the
typesetters' convenience. If that makes our text more like British English
(which generally resisted this American affectation), so be it.
Margaret Cekis, Johns Greek GA
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