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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2384 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 4, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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In the culture-war thread, @Gdanning says:

According to this, "Median household income in 2021 was $69,880[.]"

Note the placement of square brackets around the period that was inserted at the end of the quote. As a person who semi-regularly glances through court opinions during idle time at work, I feel like this practice was only recently adopted by jurists, as a replacement for the previous style (which misleadingly implies that the period is native to the quote):

According to this, "Median household income in 2021 was $69,880."

And I feel very annoyed that it was chosen by those jurists over the obvious alternative:

According to this, "Median household income in 2021 was $69,880".

According to this, "Median household income in 2021 was $69,880".

This is how I was taught to write and seems to be universal standard practice in English, so it seems weird for it to change now. The exception is when the whole sentence is in quotes, in which case it can end with quote marks instead of a period.

taught to write and seems to be universal standard practice in English,

I recall having discussions about this in the distant past. It actually is not standard practice (though IMHO it should be). See here ("The final period or comma goes inside the quotation marks, even if it is not a part of the quoted material, unless the quotation is followed by a citation."), and here which says that US and British practice is different, and traces the difference to the American use of double quotation marks and the appearance of text when typeset.

Very interesting, since I really don’t think this is a habit I’ve picked up since moving to England.

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