Re: Colons and Quotations in Tech Manuals

Subject: Re: Colons and Quotations in Tech Manuals
From: "Lin Sims" <linda -dot- sims -at- verizon -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 16:10:16 -0400

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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References:
Colons and Quotations in Tech Manuals: From: Erb, Isis
Re: Colons and Quotations in Tech Manuals: From: baotong.gu.1

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