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[ashersky]

When laws are wrong, following those laws is also wrong.

Can you tell me why it is "wrong," other than you don't like it?

Because it includes characters that are not part of the string as part of the string.  When I say "wrong", I am referring to the string "wrong".  The two strings:

wrong
wrong,

are obviously different.  If I want to refer to the string "wrong," inside quotations, how do I do it?  If the style is that punctuation inside the quotations is not part of the string, why should I magically guess that it now should be?

Under American style, then, you'd write it as "wrong,," obviously.

I understand that you don't like that and it is illogical.  I've never argued otherwise.  I'm arguing that it's still the established rule, that I love it, and that I will defend everyone's right to continue to do it as vehemently as possible.

[ashersky]

This isn't made up, by the way.  We talk about a lot of IDs that are strings that can take nonalphanumeric characters.

I don't even know what you are talking about, though, and that probably affects this discussion.  I got my degree in creative writing.  You (I assume) are a coder/IT guy/software engineer/etc. that uses letters, numbers, and symbols such as punctuation very differently.

That's a big issue here -- when the rules were made, there were no computer programmers in the world.  When computer programming became a thing, they should have taken grammar rules into account before deciding that punctuation would be used in code in such a way as to cause this confusion, or the world could have agreed to change the entire grammatical ruleset to accomodate the few coders who existed at the time.

Why couldn't coders just have used other random symbols?

[eHalcyon]

So you want punctuation like "this."
But consider punctuation with parentheticals (like this.)

Doesn't that look horrible?  And speaking of, how do questions "work?"

Ugh, it's just so disturbing that way.

[eHalcyon]

That's a big issue here -- when the rules were made, there were no computer programmers in the world.

This was already covered in the thread.  When the rules were made, they followed the logical reasoning that people are advocating now.  They only changed because of technical difficulties in the printing process.

[pacovf]

Yay, grammar*! I use Oxford comma in an inconsistent way: only when I want to insist on the difference between the enumerated objects. Does that make me a monster?

*Or is it typography now?

[ashersky]

So you want punctuation like "this."
But consider punctuation with parentheticals (like this.)

Doesn't that look horrible?  And speaking of, how do questions "work?"

Ugh, it's just so disturbing that way.

The period goes outside the ().  So do question marks.

So, how would you like questions to "work"?

It looks so horrible like that, though.

[ashersky]

If you are against the convention of including periods and commas inside the quotation marks, you are categorically against the oxford comma, right?

American style: include periods/commas inside; ignore oxford comma
British style: exclude periods/commas; require oxford comma

Unless the Oxford in the oxford comma isn't the Oxford in the UK?

[2.71828.....]

On all the technicalities I completely agree with Ashersky.  Aesthetically, I hate ending a sentence with some word or phrase that requires quotation marks.  I have purposefully rearranged sentences or modified them just so I don't have to end with that punctuation. 

As an example, I might change
Complete the sentence using the word "belly."
to
Use the word "belly" to complete the sentence.
for the sole purpose of avoiding the period/comma thing. 

Sometimes this can get a little sticky and just doesn't work, but believe me.  I will try.

[eHalcyon]

So you want punctuation like "this."
But consider punctuation with parentheticals (like this.)

Doesn't that look horrible?  And speaking of, how do questions "work?"

Ugh, it's just so disturbing that way.

The period goes outside the ().  So do question marks.

So, how would you like questions to "work"?

It looks so horrible like that, though.

It doesn't.  But I guess that's subjective.  It's really inconsistent to treat parentheses differently though. 

A practical problem with putting the punctuation inside is that you can heavily change the meaning of a quotation, especially if that punctuation is a question mark or exclamation point.

If you are against the convention of including periods and commas inside the quotation marks, you are categorically against the oxford comma, right?

American style: include periods/commas inside; ignore oxford comma
British style: exclude periods/commas; require oxford comma

Unless the Oxford in the oxford comma isn't the Oxford in the UK?

That's a really poor way of summarizing.  But your summary doesn't really match up with your statement.

Oxford comma is a separate issue which I've shared about elsewhere.  Whether you default to it or not, I don't really care.  The important thing is that you always include it if omitting it would be ambiguous, and always omit it if including it would be ambiguous.  Or just rewrite the sentence so it doesn't matter, and go return to your personal preference.  I prefer to omit most of the time.

[qmech]

If you are against the convention of including periods and commas inside the quotation marks, you are categorically against the oxford comma, right?

American style: include periods/commas inside; ignore oxford comma
British style: exclude periods/commas; require oxford comma

Unless the Oxford in the oxford comma isn't the Oxford in the UK?

Oxford is our Oxford, but the Oxford comma is not standard usage. 

Oxford has form in this area.  The Oxford English Dictionary generally favours -ize over -ise, but -ise remains more popular.

[ashersky]

I'm inconsistent in preference.  For example:

--prefer American style for punctuation within quotations
--prefer Oxford comma
--prefer color to colour
--prefer -ize to -ise

In all cases, one can argue that either option is fine, for any number of reasons.  We only argue about these things because Internet.

It's simple -- if you support peace, equality, and printing presses, put your periods and commas inside your quotations marks.  If you are against those things, use the logical style system.

[Lekkit]

I think putting punctuation inside of quotation marks looks ugly. And in most cases also makes the sentence look incomplete.

[theory]

So you don't think it's ugly to write:

Here are the enemies of the forum user "ashersky:" A, B, C.

"Witherweaver," what do you think of "ashersky?"  Can you believe what was said by "ashersky!"

In one corner we have "ashersky;" in the other we have "Witherweaver—"though I'm not sure Witherweaver is healthy.

In one corner we have "ashersky;" in the other we have "Witherweaver —" though I'm not sure Witherweaver is healthy.

Sure, you might find those aesthetic, but the point of written language is clarity in communication, not physical beauty.  And I find nothing aesthetic about those sentences above.

If you had a reason for the random punctuation, then that'd be fine.  I'm not sure why you need the quotation marks in some of these.  In fact, it appears you added punctuation randomly to try to make a point.

If it's such an issue for you, rewrite the sentence.

Instead of:

Man, I really don't like ashersky's "point."

Use:

Man, I really don't like the "point" ashersky is making.

I was putting quotes around everyone's name.  Like when news articles and really out-of-touch people say Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. 

If you are against the convention of including periods and commas inside the quotation marks, you are categorically against the oxford comma, right?

American style: include periods/commas inside; ignore oxford comma
British style: exclude periods/commas; require oxford comma

Unless the Oxford in the oxford comma isn't the Oxford in the UK?

Again, I don't really like calling it the American style or the British style.  It's silly that correct written English is a function of where you are geographically located in this day and age.  I subscribe to logical punctuation, which is meaningfully distinct from the British style.  You subscribe to something even more aggressive than the American style.

[Witherweaver]

What is used in legal documents?

[markusin]

I think putting punctuation inside of quotation marks looks ugly. And in most cases also makes the sentence look incomplete.

This being the "On the Job" thread, I'll mention that I've come to associate the punctuation within quotations as the "Git commit" punctuation.

[Witherweaver]

I think putting punctuation inside of quotation marks looks ugly. And in most cases also makes the sentence look incomplete.

This being the "On the Job" thread, I'll mention that I've come to associate the punctuation within quotations as the "Git commit" punctuation.

Can you explain this one?  I've never really used Git.

[markusin]

I think putting punctuation inside of quotation marks looks ugly. And in most cases also makes the sentence look incomplete.

This being the "On the Job" thread, I'll mention that I've come to associate the punctuation within quotations as the "Git commit" punctuation.

Can you explain this one?  I've never really used Git.

With Git, every time you make a change that you want to save to the repository, you must "commit" the changes. Every commit must come with a commit message, which explains your changes. When using Git through the command line or a bash shell, you specify your message for a commit like so:
Git commit -m "(My message)"

If you want a punctuation to appear at the end of the message when it's viewed in the future, you'd have to put that punctuation within the quotation marks. I've been using Git for my current research work, see. This situation has come up a lot for me.

[Witherweaver]

Right, so that's natural.  If you see something inside quotations, the natural thing to assume is that it belongs to the other characters (as a single string) that are inside the quotation.  You'd have the same behavior of any kind of string handling for a message you want to appear somewhere. 

[eHalcyon]

It should be noted that logical punctuation doesn't always put punctuation outside quotations.  You do what's logical, and sometimes punctuation logically goes inside.

[markusin]

It should be noted that logical punctuation doesn't always put punctuation outside quotations.  You do what's logical, and sometimes punctuation logically goes inside.

Isn't there a rule where stuff like exclamation marks and question marks go in the quotation if they were originally included, but periods do not? What am I thinking of that works like that or has a similar rule?

[Witherweaver]

While we're at it, why not put other delimiters (like "parentheses)" inside quotations?

[sudgy]

While we're at it, why not put other delimiters (like "parentheses)" inside quotations?

This made me laugh and cringe at the same time.  Do not do this again to me.

[ashersky]

While we're at it, why not put other delimiters (like "parentheses)" inside quotations?

I completely agree.  Great suggestion.

[ashersky]

While we're at it, why not put other delimiters (like "parentheses)" inside quotations?

I completely agree.  Great suggestion.

Although I'd have written it:

While we're at it, why not put other delimiters (like "()") inside quotations.

[Witherweaver]

While we're at it, why not put other delimiters (like "parentheses)" inside quotations?

I completely agree.  Great suggestion.

Although I'd have written it:

While we're at it, why not put other delimiters (like "()") inside quotations.

You mean:

While we're at it, why not put other delimiters (like "())" inside quotations.