I feel that punctuation that was not present in the quoted source should not appear between the quote marks.
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2025
119 points (98.4% liked)
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal [Moved to discuss.online]
959 readers
1 users here now
Posts and discussion about the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Hugo Award-winning author Zach Weinersmith (and related works)
https://www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersmith
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social
New comics posted whenever they get posted on the site, and old comics posted every day until we catch up in a decade or so
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Conversely, punctuation that was part of the quoted source needs to be included in the quotes.
The reason there’s room for argument is because there’s no simple rule that adequately covers all scenarios.
I'd also never put punctuation inside of "sarcastic quotes". It feels wrong.
sarcastic tone "I'd also never put punctuation inside of "sarcastic quotes." It feels wrong."
Where is your god now, huh?
If it was a period I can see the argument (and I'm still not clear on what's right), but a comma? I can't see any reason why you would include a comma within the quotes. Even if the quote had a comma in the original, you're quoting the part before the comma.
I mean, I'm pretty certain I was taught in school to do things like this:
"It's only a block away," she said.
And, yeah. I definitely prefer (all else being equal):
"It's only a block away", she said.
Logically I prefer it but visually, I hate the way the quotation mark makes a weird space before the comma
Hrm. What would you think of a ligature or unicode trick that would let you make roughly-speaking on "character" that put the quotes directly above the comma and was only as wide as the wider of the two individual characters? I could maybe get behind that.
I wouldn't mind it as shorthand in writing but I think it'd just be weird to have a defined symbol for something so specific
well if you do it the other way there's a space between the quote and the letter so the only difference is if the space is above or below (personally I prefer "", probably because of coding)
Whether you follow the rule or not, you need to have learned it.
How can I learn a rule I've never heard of? Or ever used, I've never quoted something and needed to keep the comma in. Give me an example.
Yeah, either you're quoting something that includes the comma and already has a place or you don't need to end a quote with a comma. It's just messy.
"" > “”
I still will change the ones on the right to the left ones if I paste something in and it has them. I think it's trauma from the days of early HTML coding and not wanting to do all the extra coding for each right and left mark.
What's fun is when you come across an old blog that had code snippets, but then later updated their website to automatically convert regular quotes into fancy quotes.
Well that's obviously true.
Wait, is this about where to put the comma when writing a sentence or a snippet of code?
People writing English insist the rule on the sentence makes no sense and is different from the one on code.
If you ask me, I'd suggest we use the code rule in writing too, and make sure to copy punctuation from the original, just to make that people angry.
We have a semicolon, why not a semi-close-quote?