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Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by hdjjhhvvhga on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @06:17AM (#28537347)
It's not the only element of style that may seem illogical, there are many more. Off the top of my head:

* Nested parentheses. (In theory, you could use any level needed (provided that they make sense), but in practice, they're scoffed at.) It is similar with quotes, for the same reasons: limited readability - although here you can at least juggle with single, double and French quotes, depending on the language and style guide used.

* Repetitions: unless used as a stylistic device (in poetry, advertising, etc.), your editors will try to modify repeated words, trying to find synonyms. In technical writing, it is an abomination, and competent editors know very well they must not touch any specific terms, no matter how often repeated, as they have very precise meaning.

But in general, the rules present in style guides are meant to ensure consistency and uniform reading experience, so that the reader is not distracted by form and can concentrate on the meaning, so they are a good thing as long as people are aware these are just arbitrary rules separate from spelling and grammar.

Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by Veen on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @07:53AM (#28537907)
In general writing, you have to be careful to balance repetition. At one extreme is what's been called "elegant variation"[0] and at the other is monotonous repetition, which hurts readability.

But, as you say, in technical writing, it's enormously irritating. I do a fair bit of freelance writing, and it pisses me off no end when editors and clients change a technical term for an apparent near synonym because they don't understand the nuance. It makes the sentence nonsensical and makes me look as though I don't know what I'm talking about.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegant_variation

Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by hjek on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @07:25AM (#28537723)
> * Nested parentheses. (In theory, you could use any level needed (provided that they make sense), but in practice, they're scoffed at.) It is similar with quotes, for the same reasons: limited readability - although here you can at least juggle with single, double and French quotes, depending on the language and style guide used.

Any level of nested parenthesis is fine (is what I think at least (as someone who's written a bit of Lisp of Lisp (or Racket and Clojure specifically) (because you get kinda used to it (when in a way they just become invisible (or unnoticeable))))). But nested quotations is also an issue with backtick (`) when doing command substitution in the shell, and we have to resort to $() to fix it. There's not really a $()-like syntax for written English though.

Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by nitrogen on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @02:53PM (#28542886)
There's not really a $()-like syntax for written English though.

There sort of is, if you use "smart" quotes. “Hard to find on a phone keyboard though, and not that distinct.”

Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by tener on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @07:59AM (#28537948)
Parsing nested parens requires stack, which humans are vary bad at handling. So writing in this style will be harder to read compared to linear style that people are used to. There are topics inherently nonlinear, but they are often linearized or directly drawn in 2d space.
Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by munchbunny on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @08:38AM (#28538315)
Also most languages already support nested clause structures without the use of parentheses.
Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by Veen on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @09:42AM (#28538923)
They do, but there's a limit to how much recursive embedding the average reader can cope with, especially if the writer embeds a lot of modifying clauses in the middle of the main clause so the reader is left waiting for information they need to make sense of the sentence as a whole.
Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by munchbunny on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @11:51AM (#28540648)
Absolutely agree. It's probably the biggest disconnect I feel between how ideas are structured in my head and how to best communicate them in written format.

Parentheticals in English sit in this sort of midpoint between a modifying clause for necessary elaboration and a footnote/end-note for optional detail, and lots of people including me use parentheses where "inlining" the parentheses or moving them to a footnote would be more appropriate. That's in addition to conventional uses of parentheses, like to expand abbreviations.

Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by mark-r on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @01:46PM (#28542134)
Is "vary bad" a clever pun, or just an amusing typo?
Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by jml7c5 on Thursday September 16, 2021 @09:48PM (#28560247)
Regarding repetitons: the aversion to repeated words can create some amusingly inelegant sentences. These have become known as "knobbly monsters", after a particularly egregious example where a writer needed a synonym for "alligators". British tabloids elevated the practice to self-parody, and they are prominent among the examples recorded by @knobblymonsters: https://twitter.com/knobblymonsters .
Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by fauigerzigerk on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @06:28AM (#28537420)
Absolutely. My comment is only about whether or not the second period is logically redundant.