Re: Quoting styles (was Re: Antipassive?)

Philip Newton wrote:
> On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 12:31 AM, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...> wrote:
>> ...P.s.: Today I used quoting the way I was taught in English class at
>> school, with inside punctuation. To me it looks really weird, and I don't
>> think I will use it again. But to you it looks fine, I guess?...
>
> Both styles are in use in English.
>
> I tend to prefer to put punctuation outside the quotation marks,
> except if the punctuation is part of the quote (for example, if you're
> quoting an entire sentence).
To my knowledge, including punctuation inside quotes is an
traditional/American thing, and excluding it is a
new/British/Commonwealthish thing (funny the way America changed the
spelling system, and Britain's changed the punctuation system, but
neither accepted the other's innovations). Therefore, including
punctuation is significantly more likely to be done with double quotes
than single quotes, but I don't think it's true that double quotes are
more likely to have punctuation included.

Personally, I find it weird too.

I gather it has its origins in old fashioned movable type. The quote
characters were apparently fragile, or something, and inclined to break
if put on the wrong side of the quotation mark. I don't quite understand
how this could be the case, so I assume my explanation is wrong.

--
Tristan.