Monday, May 26, 2008

'.

or

.'

?

13 comments:

byron smith said...

Both. It depends on context.

michael jensen said...

Please say more!

My information so far is that US English uses .' and British English '.

I want to avoid the ugly thing that happens when you have a footnote and it is .'41 all squished. '.41 is far neater.

byron smith said...

Wiki says it best (sometimes).

Anonymous said...

I'd definitely lose the "or" otherwise it would make no sense.

Anonymous said...

The guidelines I've used have

'Red is a colour'.

or

"Red is a colour."

(i.e. depending on the type of quotation mark being used).

Justin said...

Ask Dr Laurel...

Anonymous said...

Hey. I think you busted me for this back at college!

I want a remark!

Anonymous said...

I mean a 're-mark'.

or a 're-mark.'

Anonymous said...

Jeremy halcrow said:

Australian news style is ."

The reason is that it avoids confusion when you have quotes within quotes.

For example.. Jeremy Halcrow said, "What do you do when you want to write a title like MJ's 'the blogging parson'."

Anonymous said...

It shouldn't matter (even at Oxford) if you use either as long as you are consistent.

Anonymous said...

For a bibliographical reference (e.g., title of journal article before name of journal, the punctuation goes outside the inverted comma)

For a quotation, if you are using single quotation marks (', rather than "), then, if what you're quoting ends with a full stop, place the full stop inside the inverted comma; if it doesn't, place the punctuation mark outside the inverted comma.

Martin Kemp said...

Ive always gone with what matt has said. If the quote is the end part of a sentence in the original context then it goes inside.

/Karen/ said...

Sorry, MJ, this is of probably little use to you now but anyway ...

In accordance with the Australian Style Manual, MM goes for “. for direct speech except when another sentences begins within the quotation marks, e.g.

She said, “I don't think so”.

and

She said, “Hmm, that's interesting. You'd think it would be more consistent.”

Personally I'm partial to the news reporting method as Jeremy stated.