Story writing and posting

[h3g3l]

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[h3g3l]

The way that's implemented here is ... interesting. I'd have assumed we'd do this in the wiki as typical wiki packages.

There is currently a lot of debate surrounding "logical quotes." Computer terms have pulled us away from quotes and towards "logical" quotes instead.

You wrote

Following "for example", "that is", etc.

which is traditionally incorrect. The correct way to do this is to put punctuation inside the quotes:

"Just like this," when you have something in "quotes."

However, what do we do in cases like this:

Change directories with the command "cd;" it'll get you there every time.

You can see that traditional offsetting would cause an issue here. Thus, punctuation outside the quotes is used when referencing computer commands, or the command is (more commonly) offset from the rest of the text.

[angelabauer]

Prof William Strunk, Jr of Columbia University privately published his "Elements of Style" in 1918. Elwyn Brooks (EB) White was his student in 1919. In 1958 EB White wrote an article for The New Yorker about Elements of Style. Subsequently White was asked to edit an up-date, followed by revisions in 1972 and 1979. According to recent articles 10 million copies have been sold. Without doubt this is the record for English language style books.

What we need to keep in mind is that there are numerous other style books. It is always pedantic and somewhat pretentious to consider only one style to be correct. English usage, as is the case with most languages, evolves.

ADISC is a support organization with valued members from many nations and cultures. Strunk originally and later White wrote about what was called USA Standard Usage. This varies considerably from UK Standard Usage. Back in 1918 typewriters only monospaced and were just replacing handwriting in the business world, although they had already been accepted for the preparation of manuscripts in the publishing world.

In 1918 body copy type was still mostly set on the Line-O-Type, which did not deal well with a comma or period following a closing quote. Placement of the exclamation mark and question mark relative to a closing quote was a function of meaning. The colon and semi-colon were always placed following the closing quote. When copy was typeset in USA usage it made no difference about the nature of the quote. In the UK usage often the comma and period were placed following the quote. There that was considered correct.

With a monospace typewriter there was no technical kerning problem, so even in formal non-typeset material the USA started following the UK standard.

Just how pedantic do we want to get over the issue of quotation marks?

Perhaps we should take deep breaths and worry about other use of punctuation? In one of the recent examples I find a comma that to me is not needed. No proofreader working for any major law firm would accept that usage.

Personally I am far more concerned by the non-standard "informal" spelling. It is very hard to suspend disbelief when a post claims to be from a university student who cannot spell common words. Perhaps worse is when posts contain words which are not common, but are used incorrectly.

Within ADISC we have valuable members still in middle school. Others have not finished high school. How seriously will they be taken when applying for jobs if they cannot write Standard Business English appropriate for the USA or the UK? Or, standard business usage in their own language? Can we be sure future employers will accept Twitter and Txt as Standard?

As a support group should we find ways to gently encourage standard usage in stories?

[h3g3l]

Originally Posted by angelabauer

Just how pedantic do we want to get over the issue of quotation marks?

What I am pointing out, above, is the fluidity of something as basic as even this in our modern use of the English language.

As a second example, take a look at articles written both before and after mainstream use of computers took over for use of typewriters with monospaced fonts. The number of spaces after a period has been changed from two (then) to one (now). If you grew up on a typewriter, you have been directly confronted with this in your working life.

Within ADISC we have valuable members still in middle school. Others have not finished high school. How seriously will they be taken when applying for jobs if they cannot write Standard Business English appropriate for the USA or the UK? Or, standard business usage in their own language? Can we be sure future employers will accept Twitter and Txt as Standard?

As a support group should we find ways to gently encourage standard usage in stories?

Unfortunately, I have reached the conclusion that English is no longer taught and in the USA we have abandoned proper English for a widespread pidgin hybrid.

The original article needs further proofing, yes. I'm pleased that the author, though, took it upon himself (Dreamaker?) to initiate the page.