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A comment on Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American. Parent comment

Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by JasonFruit on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @09:12AM (#28538653)
Did you really say, "I tend to agree with the author?"

See the problem there? The quoted sentence is not a question, but the outer sentence is; why, then, is the question mark inside the quotation marks? Double punctuation would solve that ambiguity, and would not be redundant.

Alternatively, and I'm not sure which is correct, if the question mark is outside the quotation marks, was the quote a complete sentence?

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Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by abduhl on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @09:19AM (#28538711)
The question mark is supposed to go outside the quote if it is not part of the quote, FYI. Same with exclamation points. Internalizing only happens with periods and commas.
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Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by JasonFruit on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @10:08AM (#28539221)
That's what it looked like to me, too, but isn't it telling that we can't treat punctuation consistently?
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Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by CiceroCiceronis on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @10:22AM (#28539386)
We can treat it consistently, it just takes a full book-length style guide to do so. Exceptions of exceptions are a frustrating form of consistency, but they are consistent nevertheless.
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Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by JasonFruit on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @11:10AM (#28540129)
In any colloquial sense, the existence of exceptions means there is inconsistency.
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Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by quesera on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @01:04PM (#28541610)
Also awkward:

Did you ask, "Is this your dog?"?

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Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by philsnow on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @03:25PM (#28543255)
To me, seeing that punctuation is soothing. It's finding another person who I know thinks the same way I do, if only about this one, pedantic thing.
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Re:Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation ov... by joemi on Wednesday September 15, 2021 @02:46PM (#28542788)
I do wonder if that kind of thing is awkward just because we're not used to it...
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