[colug-432] Stoopid Question: Doable But Much Work For What?

[Steve VanSlyck]

Heh - I actually tried that once in high school, trying to design a 
consistent - and logically justifiable - system of punctuation because I 
thought, as many people do, that quotation makes should only go outside 
the punctuation when the punctuation was part of the original quote. 
Which is not what I'd been taught in third grade (or at any time for that 
matter) but which, as I said, I thought "right."

After a few months of frustration, I found that it was impossible. I went 
back to the standard American system of putting commas and periods inside 
quotes - and many years later found that following the published standard 
wasn't so arbitrary after all, but consitent, justifiable, and in the end 
much easier to read given the way the eye scans the lines of type and 
finds the separation of words on the printed page. I had come around to 
the standard. Maybe I'll end up that way here too.

----- Original Message -----

> Ahhh! Standards are wonderful. They are so wonderful that 
> everyone should have their own standards.