Okay, it’s a slow day, and there’s nothing going on in the back room. So I have questions for the BJ pedants:
HOORAY
How you you spell the shortened version of “hooray!” As in hip, hip, hooray!
I spell it “yay”, often with an exclamation point.
I have seen “yeah”, which I think is a synonym for “yes” or “yep”.
I have a friend who spells it “yaaa!”.
I have also seen “yah”, which I don’t understand.
How do you spell this word?
Is there a correct spelling of this word?
FUCKING PUNCTUATION AT THE END OF A SENTENCE WITH QUOTATION MARKS
Example 1:
How do you spell the word “honey”?
To me, that’s the only way that makes sense, but I don’t know how to reconcile that with the new “punctuation goes inside the quotation” thing which is TOTALLY OPPOSITE of what the nuns taught me in grade school.
Example 2:
At feeding time, I always ask the kitties “Who’s hungry?”
That’s a question within a statement. Should there be a period at the end of the sentence?
⭐️
Totally open thread.
Monday Open Thread
Jackie
I always say “yup.” Easier than choosing from all the other options.
YAY! #uno!
Alce_e _ ardillo
My inner grammar Nazi is not worked up about either question…..
OlFroth
My father was an English teacher. He said the punctuation goes inside the quotation marks, unless the quotation is followed by a citation.
Another Scott
I suspected as much, but made me look…
Style.mla.org:
No opinions on Hooray from me. I don’t use it enough to have a preference.
HTH!
Cheers,
Scott.
JaySinWA
The grammar Nazis are giving out citations now? What’s the fine?
WaterGirl
@OlFroth: In my sentence #1, it looks dumb to write:
How do you spell the word “honey?”
Because what I am doing is quoting the word honey in my sentence, which happens to be a question. The question mark has nothing to do with the word honey.
In my sentence #2:
At feeding time, I always ask the kitties “Who’s hungry?”
I am making a statement, and within that statement is a question in quotes. so is there a period anywhere? Because it’s a statement.
bbleh
1. Interjections is interjections. Not clear whether any of those are shortened versions of “hooray.”
2. Per above, inside. I think it’s as much for aesthetic reasons as any other; it just looks neater that way.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott:
Thanks for that info. If we’re just supposed to please the type-setters, I say screw that. :-)
So you never say some form of YAY! to exclaim happiness? Do you always say “yes” rather than use a more casual form of saying that?
Doc H
Def on team “yay”.
Related: wailed or whaled? As in ‘someone wailed on something’.
WaterGirl
@bbleh: Per your #1, I was just using hooray as a way to give a sense of what is being conveyed in the word. I was trying to ask how you spell that word.
Brachiator
Hmm. I always thought of the word as it’s own thing, not a shortened version of “…hooray!”
But I guess I spell it based on context and how I’m feeling at the time.
waspuppet
Example 1 is correct they way it is. “Honey” is not a question. Are they really saying all punctuation inside quotation marks at all times? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time “they” had no idea what they’re talking about.
Example 2 is also fine the way it is. I get the thinking behind wanting a period at the end, but many years ago I was taught a bunch of grammar rules, and the last one was “Don’t do something that looks stupid. That overrules all other rules.”
pacem appellant
“Yay”. The others have pre-existing meanings, so no need to double up. My (correct) opinion regarding punctuation inside or outside quotes can be properly inferred from the beginning of this post.
@Another Scott, I know that wasn’t the convention when I was growing up, but we were objectively wrong then and I’m glad the era of digital fonts is correcting this extremely minor typographic error.
WaterGirl
@Doc H: I do not know.
I always wonder about:
hear, hear
or
here, here
Ken
I am the wrong person to ask about quotation marks, because I write software, so to me what goes inside the quotes is exactly what you want to refer to. Thus your example is correct because you are asking about the word “honey”, not some hypothetical word “honey?” that’s spelled with a question mark at the end. (Or maybe it’s a glottal stop, “honeyʔ”.)
I will also note that a lot of rules for punctuation were not handed down from high from a deity, but by a bunch of typesetters fitting together lead slugs in such a way that they (a) didn’t fall out of the forms and (b) looked nice on the page — but mostly (a).
Shana
Re: punctuation, you’re correct. Quotes go before question mark in first example and inside in second. The nuns were right
arrieve
The quotation mark question is usually easy for question marks, I think. (This is the kind of thing I had to learn in grad school for teaching ESL a couple of years ago, though the students I teach are not at a level to worry about it yet, thankfully.)
If it’s a sentence containing a quotation, then placement of the question mark depends on whether the quotation is itself a question.
She asked herself, “Who thought Mike Johnson was a good answer to any sane question?”
Did she say, “Mike Johnson is ambulant pond scum”?
If both things are true (question contained within a question) I believe question mark goes inside quotes, as in the first example.
ETA: And both of your examples are correct.
WaterGirl
@Brachiator: Okay, but if you are trying to convey an answer in the affirmative, with one of the shorter versions I listed up top, how do you spell it?
JCJ
At feeding time, I always ask the kitties “Who’s hungry?”
I would have written that
At feeding time I always ask the kitties, “Who’s hungry?”
pacem appellant
@WaterGirl: In sentence two, a period at the end would look silly. So omitting it is just fine stylistically IMO.
WaterGirl
@waspuppet: ooh, I like your answers!
billcinsd
As long as your intent is decipherable, where the quotes are is immaterial. I always put the sentence punctuation outside the quote.
I think yah is from the German for yes
JCJ
@Doc H:
Depends if you wail on someone with a whale, then I suppose you whaled on them. Otherwise I would go with wailed.
NoOneOfConsequence
Punctuation is “style” as in “style guide”. A lot of the rules for when/where to punctuate are from print – and, I believe a huge amount of it is from fixed width fonts. For example, I was taught “one space after a comma, two after a period.” Well, one space after a period is just fine, on modern computer screens.
I learned in one place, that you should add a period after any non-period, at the end of the sentence. That means, you should end with “etc..” if your sentence ends with the abbreviation for et cetera, and if your sentence just ends….
Hm? Oh, if your sentence trails off, you end with an ellipsis, 3 dots (and only 3 dots!), and then, add a period to end the sentence.
I follow those because they make a lot of sense to me.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: I take Yay as being used for a group. “Yay Team!”
I take Hooray as being used for a single person. “Hip Hip Hooray!” for Captain Bungle doing a good thing, like retiring. ;-)
So, I think they’re different.
I would probably quietly clap rather than yell out either, myself, but I dunno.
;-)
[/dissecting the frog]
Cheers,
Scott.
patrick II
I’m a rebel — I’m sticking with the “.” outside of the quotes. Besides, that is the way the sisters of God taught me and I want to go to heaven.
Other MJS
Recently, Cole wrote “damnit”, which I can’t help but pronounce “dam-nit” in my head. I use “dammit”, obviously.
Frankensteinbeck
Technical style requires you put the punctuation inside the quotation marks. As an author I say fuck that. You bend the language as needed for clarity. Effective communication is the goal, not rule adherence. Putting punctuation inside the quotation marks subtly changes the way people interpret text. I put it inside, outside, or both depending on how I want it to be read.
JaySinWA
@WaterGirl: I’m consistently inconsistent but I generally claw the sentence punctuation outside the quote unless it is specifically part of the quote. As to sentence #2 I would probably drop the period unless (using part of OlFroth’s father’s rule) it was followed by a citation (as in “…she said.”)
Speaking of inconsistencies I don’t know if the ellipses for omission actually belong inside the quotes, but outside seems wrong.
KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))
“yay” is the appropriate spelling for gladness.
“yeah” is colloquial for “yes”
How do you spell “honey”? Question mark outside.
At feeding time, I always ask the kitties “Who’s hungry?” Question mark inside the quote marks, no period outside.
Thus I have spoken, so it is spoken.
Catnaz
Yay. The nuns were right (about that anyway). Third one is a puzzler, all right.
scav
@WaterGirl: Was “Oyez! Oyez!” so “Hear Hear!” should be correct. As in, “Listen up!”
rikyrah
Yeah!!
Lapassionara
@Another Scott: I was taught the there is an American convention for commas and periods (inside the quotation marks) and an English convention (outside).
that does not answer the question about question marks, however. So I like the way WG did it above.
Central Planning
Exclamation points after numbers can bring the wrath of r/unexpectedfactorial down on you.
Fun fact: there is also a double factorial
billcinsd
@rikyrah: Where do the “quotes” go?
Paul M Gottlieb
Hear, hear! Is correct, The expression was originally intended to show support and approval of something someone else had just said. Example: “Hear, hear those wise words!”
FastEdD
Yes! This has bothered me for quite awhile. I went out with a woman who read something from me and complained, “Ewww, he’s a writer.” Like that’s a bad thing? She’s history. I later went out with a librarian who had magnificent spelling but she wanted to rearrange the shelves in my kitchen. I wound up with a sweet Science Fiction writer who traveled the world with me.
Yay, yea, or yeah? I think the first two are the same and the last is not a long a, as in she loves you yeah yeah yeah. I always spelled it yea, but I’m warming to yay.
JaySinWA
Eschew obfuscation. Always a good rule.
Other MJS
@WaterGirl (and all following commenters):
OMG, so much this! I hate this rule, and the issue of placing the question mark makes the problem clear. Thanks for this trope!
For my money, the rule should only apply when a complete sentence is being quoted. Otherwise:
My favorite word is “paraprosdokian”.
And fuck you, Grammarly.
scav
@scav: Oyez Oyez! for those pedants that like extra reading.
The rest of y’all can argue if the hyperlink should include the exclamation mark or not.
JaySinWA
@Other MJS:
Well that was unexpected.
Alison Rose
It is without question “yay” if meant as a shortened “hooray” and a celebratory word. “Yeah” can be said in a similar way, but to me it has a different connotation, and as you said, is far more often a synonym for “yes” or similar. “Yaaa” would make me want to slap someone, and “yah” to me is a German person agreeing with something.
On the punctuation in quotes issue, I am a contrarian because while I was an English major and have worked as an editor, and I am well aware that American grammar rules say the punctuation almost always goes inside the quotes, I DO NOT CARE AND IT IS WRONG in many cases. If I write the line:
American rules would typically say the period goes inside the quote, although some will differ. To me, if it is part of the overall sentence, not the quoted portion, it should always go outside the quotes. I do not give a rat’s ass what any US-based grammarian wants to insist upon, I loathe writing it that way and, if I’m writing in a casual way — a blog comment, a Goodreads review, etc — I put the punctuation outside the quotes. When I’ve written in a professional sense, I will rework my sentences as much as I can to avoid having a line end with a partial quote and thus having to put the punctuation inside the quotes because it pains me to do so. It’s also confusing because different people will state different rules.
FastEdD
This is why I loved teaching Math. Very few exceptions to rules. Can’t divide by zero, because it is undefined, but that’s about it. Same language everywhere in the world. Yay! Yea!
Percysowner
I do YAY for Hooray, or use an emoji if I’m texting.
I am totally at see when it comes to punctuation and quotation marks. I’m pretty good with ?s i.e. How do you say “honey”? feels like it goes after the quotes, but in He asked “how do you say honey?” the ? is referring to what He asked. Periods drive me crazy. I was taught that you use a comma inside and a period after the quotes, but that doesn’t always feel right. I go with the flow, use both and try really, really hard to write anything with quotes to my son-in-law with a Masters in English. He wouldn’t say anything, but I’d always wonder if I were right or not.
Another Scott
@Lapassionara: I agree with the folks who say that a question mark and a closing quotation mark should be arranged to minimize confusion rather than typographic rule purity.
Another “rule” that kinda makes sense but is easy to get wrong:
A.B. Smith et al., “How to drive neighbors crazy,” Nature, …
vs
A.B. Smith, et al., “How to drive neighbors crazy,” Nature, …
No comma before “et al.” unless (serial names, or names reversed, or …)
Cheers,
Scott.
patrick II
I just had a funny phone call to Venmo customer service. The man who answered had an Indian accent and I thought he might be in India and I always ask anyway, so I ask “Where are you now?” So he asks me where I thought he was from and I answer “India”.
Venmo Rep: That’s what everyone says.
Me: So where are you really?
VR: Columbia, South America.
Me: Really? How long has it been since you have immigrated there? (his accent was so strong that I would ask)
VR: I was born here in Columbia.
Me: What is your native language?
VR: Spanish
Me: (to myself) of course. So where did you learn to speak English?
VR: Watching movies.
Me: Oh, Bollywood movies.
VR: No, American movies.
Me: (Still confused) So where did you get such a strong Indian accent?
Him: I don’t know, but everyone who calls assumes I’m from India.
So, you have to hear this guy to really understand, but this Spanish-speaking Columbian who watched American movies learned to speak English as if he was walking the streets of Mumbai. It is a strange and sometimes amusing world.
mrmoshpotato
Totally opposite? Were the nuns British?
What I’ve noticed in American vs British newspapers is
“American.”
“British”.
ETA – Forget “hooray.”
I just go with “Goodness gracious great gherkins of Aldi!”
MattF
Apple autocorrect has been doing odd things since the latest system updates. It ‘corrected’ ‘its’ to ‘it’s’ incorrectly, the string ‘LinAlg’ was changed to something incomprehensible in French (!)… Artificial intelligence, I guess. An old friend once said artificial intelligence had to be preceded by artificial stupidity. And so, here we are.
frosty
@WaterGirl: wailed and hear, hear.
Not as many pedants chiming in as I expected. But the day is young!
JaySinWA
@mrmoshpotato: So what do Canadians do?
mrmoshpotato
@Jackie: Red 7.
wjca
To my mind, “yay!” would be something I might say, but not something I would be unlikely to write. However, if I needed to, I would go with “yea” — as in yea, verily, yea.
mrmoshpotato
@JaySinWA: Not sure. End everything with “eh?”
FastEdD
How do you spell the opposite of yes?
Nuh unh, Nuh huh, Unh unh, Uh nah, na ahh, or just nope
I am confoosed
mrmoshpotato
@OlFroth:
What did the quotation do? Apparently not something bad enough to be written a ticket.
Jamey
“YAY!” is, AFAIK, a derivation/corruption of “Yea!,” as in, “all in favor of the motion signify by saying, ‘yea’.” I’d be surprised to learn that “yay” is a contraction of “hooray.” But then, I’m always being surprised by stuff.
lowtechcyclist
Had to look this crap up 15 years or so ago when I was preparing some papers of mine for publication.
Talking about punctuation that isn’t part of the quoted material, but rather part of the sentence that includes the quote: commas and periods go inside the quotation marks; everything else goes outside. (Putting punctuation that isn’t part of the quote inside the quotation marks bothers me; it should be like set inclusion. But them’s the rules, unless they’ve changed pretty recently.
If the quote is at the end of a sentence, and the quoted material ends with a question mark or exclamation point, there’s no need for a period outside the quotation marks.
Yay!! I’m finally through with this comment.
FastEdD
@mrmoshpotato: That’s Canadian.
mrmoshpotato
@Doc H:
Did you beat some one or some thing with a whale?
fancycwabs
I am reminded of the time Dave Shumka was trying to find the president of the Tom Hanks fan club, who was like yay Big.
JaySinWA
@patrick II: My wife was taking College French after High school French and the Prof was correcting her pronunciation. He asked her who taught her French. It was in an American Catholic school with a French Canadian nun, and she was speaking with a French Canadian accent.
WaterGirl
@JCJ: You are so right about the comma!
geg6
@OlFroth:
My mom, a journalist, would agree with your father.
JaySinWA
@mrmoshpotato:
As opposed to beating them with high pitched cries?
wjca
Except that “Hear hear!” isn’t used for “pay attention!” It’s used for “I agree!”
catclub
@Central Planning: You probably know about how big the ‘tree’ function gets.
Journeywoman
When I was learning this in school, I came up with a way to help me remember the rules which has worked very well:
– The “short” punctuation (periods and commas) always goes inside the quotes.
– The “medium” punctuation (colons and semicolon) always goes outside the quotes.
– The “tall” punctuation (question marks and exclamation points) are context-dependent: if they’re part of the quote, they go inside (your “hungry” example), but if they’re only part of the larger sentence (your “honey” example), they go outside.
It’s important to note that this is the American convention – I think in British English, even the commas and periods can go outside the quotes if they’re not part of the quoted material, but somebody who was trained under those rules would have to confirm.
—Journeywoman (long-time lurker, very occasional commenter, and sometime professional copyeditor)
zhena gogolia
Modern style for the publishers I deal with is periods and commas go inside quotation marks. Other punctuation marks go outside, unless they’re part of the quotation.
lowtechcyclist
@NoOneOfConsequence:
For example, I was taught “one space after a comma, two after a period.” Well, one space after a period is just fine, on modern computer screens.
I was taught that too, but apparently one space isn’t just ‘just fine,’ it’s the rule now.
I’m fine with that in the abstract – I really don’t care one way or the other – but my fingers still do two spaces by long habit.
I was preparing a document for distribution the other day, and my boss asked me to go through and fix the spacing. With find-and-replace in MS Word, that isn’t too bad, but my question is, why doesn’t MS Word have a setting that automatically corrects this as you go?
Some software for online fora (e.g. Discourse) does this; surely Word could be modified to do it too if you wanted. But AFAICT there’s no setting in Word that you can set so it does that for you as you go along.
peter
@JCJ: hear hear, here.
Jeffro
71 comments in and no one has recommended reading Dreyer’s English???
And you call yourselves pedants!
geg6
@geg6:
Plus, my mom was taught by nuns to do that. And also my 5 siblings (I got tossed from Catholic school in first grade…don’t ask because it was for a stupid reason). And that’s what my sister, the English professor, does.
I don’t know what nuns other people had that taught differently, but these were Sisters of St. Joseph.
ETA: Also I admit to being a bad person because I am very judgy about things like this. I’m turning into my mom. ;-)
Ken
@Another Scott: I suspect that citation rule you cite will soon go away, as more journals fire their copy-editors and typesetters in favor of having the authors send camera-ready copy.
wjca
Of course you can divide by zero! Anything divided bt zero is infinity. But it’s doable.
ETA Think of the Big Bang. All the mass of the universe, in zero volume, and therefore of infinite density.
Dangerman
Yeah is yes.
Yea is shortened version of, well, you know.
There’s more than one way to spell “honey”? What kind of socialist conspiracy is involved here?
As for question marks, hell if I know.
* leaves, quietly singing “conjunction junction, what’s your f’ing function (Samuel L. Jackson version)
Dorothy A. Winsor
As someone says above, it’s a matter of which style guide you’re using.
I used to teach editing, so I happen to have the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed, sitting on my shelf. Entry 6.8 says “Periods and commas precede closing quotation marks.”
6.9 says “Colons, semicolons, question marks, and exclamation points…all follow closing quotation marks unless a question mark or an exclamation point belongs with the quoted matter.” Examples: “Where are you from?” but “Which of Shakespeare’s characters said, “All the world’s a stage”?
6.10 says there are alternative systems, which brings us back to it depending on which style guide you’re using.
WaterGirl
@scav: Thank you! I was never sure about that one.
Redshift
Technically, I believe “yea” is the correct spelling, but I usually spell it yay because it feels more exclamation-y.
Yeah and yah are informal versions of yes, and aren’t the same thing (though yea can also mean yes, as in voting yea.)
For quotes and stuff, I’ve been much more inclined to do whatever looks right to me every since I learned that most of the prescriptive rules I learned in school were made up in (if I remember correctly) the 1930s and 40s, and aren’t longstanding “correct English.”
WaterGirl
@Journeywoman: Welcome! Or welcome back, as the case may be. You may have spelled your nym differently or have a new device or new IP address.
Either way, welcome! Now that I have approved this one, future comments with this nym from this device will show up right away for everyone. Now I will read your comment. :-)
Steve in the ATL
“Does your friend really answer calls from unknown numbers?”
”Who, Ray?”
Paul in KY
I go with ‘yay’.
WaterGirl
@geg6: Ours were Sisters of St. Joseph, but we were taught just the opposite! Very interesting.
patrick II
@JaySinWA:
Rodrigo Y Gabriela were Mexicans who went to Ireland to busk. They learned their English while playing in Irish bars.
So, when they started playing concerts they, particularly Gabriella, had that manner of speaking. She would step up to the mic and say things like “It’s fooking cold out here”. She refined her language a bit after a while but still has a beautiful Irish/Spanish accent when she speaks English.
You should have heard my Alabama friend’s version of Mandarin.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
I’m actually paid to be a grammar pedant (comes with working in law, where grammar ambiguity has been known to become costly).
The cheer, I’d spell “yay”. “Yea” is the opposite of “nay”, as in voting yea or nay. “Yeah” is a differently pronounced cheer, as in “oh yeah!”
Steve in the ATL
@JaySinWA: “Repeat after me, students: que j’adore les Timbits!”
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: So if I’m using the carefully considered WaterGirl guide, I am correct as long as I am following my own rules.
I like it!
Betty Cracker
Jesus! Don’t encourage them! 😂
Frankensteinbeck
@JaySinWA:
Apologize.
geg6
@JaySinWA: LOL! I was snubbed in Canada for speaking French with a Belgian accent. My college French professor was from Belgium and she was appalled when I showed up in class speaking French with an Italian accent. My high school French teacher was from Italy.
I don’t even try to speak French any more.
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL: hahaha
Mel
@Shana:
@arrieve: I agree, as does Warriner’s Grammar.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: See what happens when you leave for 5 days? Everything goes to hell. :-)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@WaterGirl: You betcha!
Mel
@OlFroth: I think he was referring to essay formats for citing / quoting sources within the text of a paper, not to basic sentence grammar. As an English teacher, likely he would have been teaching critical essay format, using the MLA rules as a guide.
trollhattan
After three seasons of The Great I have chosen to replace hooray with huzzah.
Betty
@mrmoshpotato: To whale on something is not related to the mammal. It’s a verb in its own right.
mrmoshpotato
@Other MJS:
I can’t stand their ads.
geg6
OT (if there can be such a thing in an open thread):
Isn’t Junior testifying in Manhattan today?
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Please tell me you are not comparing me with the “I can see Russia from my house” lady.
lowtechcyclist
@wjca:
Which one? On the real number line, you’ve got both positive and negative infinities.
And on the complex plane, an infinitude of directions (all of them, Katie!) go to infinity.
And there are limits where, as the denominator goes to zero, the quotient as a whole converges to some finite value.
WaterGirl
We have officially come full circle! It’s lunchtime, and I just fed the kitties with the usual “Who’s hungry?
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: Math and number pedants also welcome. :-)
Journeywoman
@WaterGirl: Thanks! I think I comment seldom enough that I always wind up in moderation for one reason or another. :-)
I’d like to second what others are saying about style guides, though. Conventions change over time, and during the messy transition phase, there can be more than one standard which can lay claim to being “correct,” so it’s often going to come down to which style guide (like the Chicago Manual of Style) has been chosen for whatever you’re reading.
mrmoshpotato
@Betty: Oh. Thank you.
It’s good to know that you could whale on someone with a whale while wailing (or while whaling, or while wailing and whaling).
geg6
Next question having nothing to do with pedantry…
Has anyone else watched Jury Duty on Prime? My sister and I just discovered it this weekend and I’ve never laughed so hard in my life. Highly recommend.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@WaterGirl: LOL. That never occurred to me.
scav
@wjca: Check the citation. It is sometimes used as the imperative “Listen!” Courts, town criers. This pedantry may err on the side of traditional usage (and usages may alter and expand) but it is not wrong.
japa21
“here, here” is correct as in:
“Where would you like me to put these papers?”
“Here, here!”
JoyceH
Yay and yeah have two different meanings and two different pronunciations. Yay is a positive exclamation and pronounced with a long a. Yeah is an affirmative and pronounced as the slurring of two syllables. The syllables can be spoken distinctly to express skepticism – “yee-a” with a short a as in “mad”.
scav
My French host-father was horrified when I showed up a few years later with a somewhat Haitian accent.
Tony Jay
Is “Yay” a contraction of “Hooray”? I always thought it was just an olde-worlde “Yes” we’ve retained for the specific purpose of cheering.
Anyway. Yes. It’s “Yay” for that context. “Yeah” used in the modern sense of “Yes” has pretty much superseded the Biblical sense (oo-er, Missus) that normally gets twinned with “Verily”.
Punctuation goes outside the quotation marks unless the quote is a question. Otherwise, you’re turning the quote into a question. Would I put a full-stop after a quote with a question mark? Yes. Because the question mark is within the sentence that the full-stop is marking the end of.
All mileages may vary.
BretH
I’m loosing interest in this old thread.
WaterGirl
@Journeywoman: I’m less concerned about what I’m reading; mostly i just want to get it right if I am writing.
WaterGirl
@BretH: Just say what you really think!
But I did catch the extra O. :-)
edit: Did you see that your fall colors post is this week?
Steve in the ATL
@lowtechcyclist: is the infinite number of whole numbers twice as large as the infinite number of even or odd numbers? Feel free to take a bong hit before you answer.
Janee
Never heard “hooray” before. Always “hoorah”, and never abbreviated. Anything else is just another form of cheer.
I don’t follow the punctuation rules, really. With question marks it is easy; is the stuff inside quotes the question, or is the entire sentence including the quote the question? I personally end every sentence with a period (or question mark) whether it includes quotes at the end or not. I am writing a sentence that may or may not include the exact words of someone else (in quotation marks, as they wrote or spoke).
JaySinWA
@Steve in the ATL: I think you misspelled poutine.
eclare
@geg6:
I’ve heard that it is very good, but I don’t have Prime. Otherwise it sounds like something I would love.
Steve in the ATL
@JaySinWA: I was talking to a Canadian lawyer last Friday and he actually said “holy jumpin’!” He had no idea why I was laughing so hard at him.
Another Scott
@wjca: Oooh. Math pedancy!
x/0 is not infinity. It is undefined because of the definition of division.
There’s lots of mind-bending stuff in complex math like essential singularities and Great Picard’s Theorem:
Every possible value, infinitely often!
Yikes!!
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Memory Pallas
@Percysowner:
totally at sea
Was that a trap? Easter egg?
JaySinWA
@Steve in the ATL: I have no idea either.
Steve in the ATL
@Another Scott:
Pretty sure my wife uses this concept when packing for a trip
geg6
@eclare:
I don’t think you need a Prime account to watch it. It’s available on their Freevee service, which is free to use but does mean there are ads you have to suffer through.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=G8RFJ29923AUM6ZE
Renie
I’m so old I forget to stop putting two spaces after a sentence before starting the next sentence.
Steve in the ATL
@JaySinWA: clearly you live too close to Canada then!
catclub
what about zero divided by zero? I am pretty sure that is undefined, rather than infinity.
mrmoshpotato
@patrick II: Wow. That’s weird.
Ken
In the spirit of “ghoti”, would “lleigh” be considered an acceptable spelling of “yay”?
geg6
@Renie:
I tried to do that, too, but it just won’t take. I’ve been double spacing after periods for too long to change at this point in my life.
catclub
@Steve in the ATL: same size. they can be matched up 1:1
Dr Daniel Price (Saint Vincent)
American Chemical Society style places all punctuation (particularly a sentence-ending period) outside the quotation marks unless that punctuation is from the quoted text. Needless to state, I favor that approach, along with the mandatory Oxford comma and unAmerican hyphenation (e.g. “sentence-ending”).
JaySinWA
@Steve in the ATL:
Eh?
Steve in the ATL
@catclub: I agree—infinity is infinity, no degrees.
catclub
@lowtechcyclist:
LaTeX will fix all this when you run your plaintext through the processor, so you don’t have to think about either case.
wjca
I once had an English teacher who maintained that many of our “rules” of grammar were the result of would-be pedants determined to force the English language into a straitjacket of Latin grammar. His two favorite examples were:
“Is it OK to use a preposition to end a sentence with?”
And, relevant to this thread:
“This is the sort of errant pedantry up with which I will not put!”
JaySinWA
@catclub: But then you have to have thought about Latex. Learning to drop extra spacing may be easier.
catclub
@Steve in the ATL: I disagree. The reals are _much_ bigger than the integers. Also, the irrationals are bigger than the rationals.
Another Scott
@Steve in the ATL:
Some infinities are bigger than others. Gammow’s 1 2 3 … Infinity is excellent in talking about things like that.
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
E.
Anybody done the “Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo “ one yet?
R'Chard
‘Yeah’ is slang for ‘yes,’ the traditional affirmation.
‘Yah’ is a corruption of ‘yeah,’ pronounced like the German ‘ja.’ Means ‘yes,’ but with a layer of sarcasm or cynicism. I’ve seen a few authors use it that way, and my Mom and Dad used to.
‘Yay’ is the exclamation of joy & success, with extra y’s & !’s if you want to go long with it.
‘Yea’ is the archaic equivalent of ‘yes’ (used often in the Bible with ‘verily’); affirmation. Think it’s Old English or something, pronounced yay.
You can verify them all in online dictionaries, but many of those are not the bastions of integrity that they were before the internet (and some didn’t even exist). I stick to Oxford and Merriam-Webster.
catclub
@wjca: “This is the sort of errant pedantry up with which I will not put!”
“This is the kind of arrant pedantry I will not put up with, asshole!”
;) also, does emoji go inside the quotation marks?
JaySinWA
@wjca: I thought Latin didn’t have many grammatical rules, that you could pretty much jumble words in any order and it didn’t change the meaning. I didn’t think there was much punctuation either.
Pete Mack
Surely “hooray!” already is the short version? (Or “hurrah!” in British dialect.)
JaySinWA
I thought we were skipping politics in this post?
JoyceH
Pedant joke – how do you tell a factory worker from a chemist? Ask them to pronounce “unionized”.
Steve in the ATL
@catclub:
@Another Scott:
it is, of course, a philosophical question, but logically it’s either infinity or it’s not—so no infinite set is larger (or smaller!) than any other.
Another Scott
@Another Scott:
GammowGamow.[sigh]
Cheers,
Scott.
catclub
@JoyceH: In talking, our family always refers to the Grand Union grocery store as Grand Onion. 7 year old sees word and pronounces it as it is spelled. Cannot be unseen/heard.
JaySinWA
@JoyceH: Are “unionized free radicals” oxymorons in both realms?
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: LOL! The Wasilla Wingnut never actually said that, but a lot of what Tina Fey said was verbatim from Caribou Barbie’s word salad, I mean speeches, no, I mean word salad.
(Sorry, salads. I mean no disrespect.)
catclub
@Steve in the ATL: But wasn’t the question about how big is a set of numbers versus a different set of numbers? So maybe the mathematicians should answer that one?
Betsy
Technically it’s been for a long time correctly “yea,” pronounced “yay,” like in the KJV Bible — but everyone now spells it “yay,” so I guess that’s the current way now and the Jacobean King’s English is shoved aside after a few centuries of a good run.
Another Scott
@Steve in the ATL: No, it’s math.
As mentioned above, you can see if an infinity is the same size as another by lining up the numbers 1:1. If you can’t miss any, then they’re the same size.
Some infinities are much bigger than others.
Aleph number
Cheers,
Scott.
JaySinWA
@catclub: There’s a labor lawyer joke in there somewhere.
ETA talk about another order of infinity.
wjca
No. “X times as large” is meaningless with infinity. There are, however, different orders of infinity. (These sorts of questions are why mathematicians go mad, c.f. Georg Cantor.)
And Scott #140 got there first
Craig
@NoOneOfConsequence: yeas. “etc..” is a thing. It’s the way I learned too. Of course Cormac McCarthy and others are all, ‘ fuck punctuation
dnfree
@Doc H: “Whaled on” someone I think colloquially at least means beat them (physically, not in a race).
WaterGirl
@R’Chard: Welcome!
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thank god! That would have cut me to the core.
MattF
@Another Scott: It all gets very complicated. Cantor’s attic has a more or less up-to-date summary of our current understanding of degrees of mathematical biggitude.
wjca
I am blissfully ignorant of Latin. But I was of an age when a teacher’s word was gospel. And this bit stuck.
Mr. Bemused Senior
How can this thread have reached 150+ comments without a reference to Eats, Shoots & Leaves? Just askin’…
CliosFanBoy
A simple gold chain almost always works well, a classic style.
Oh wait, that’s for BJ pendants. Never mind
PaulWartenberg
Anyone recommend an affordable book editor to preview a short story anthology?
CliosFanBoy
The old joke about the Koala Bear and the Australian prostitute? I’m confused.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: That was the best way I could come up with to describe her without actually having to use her name. Kind of like Voldemort.
edit: same with our ex-governor. I refused to type or say his name. That was a long 6 years.
dnfree
@frosty: To whale on someone is to beat them up. To wail is to cry out. I don’t think there’s any such thing as wail on. Wailing is just wailing.
randy khan
Many U.S. style manuals say to keep commas and periods inside the closing quotation mark in normal writing (don’t do it in a comma-delimited list!), with other punctuation outside. There are exceptions, like the “Who’s hungry?” example, where the punctuation is part of the quotation and not just part of the overall sentence.
Also in certain kinds of writing (academic and legal come to mind), if you’re quoting part of a sentence but not the whole thing, and that’s the end of the sentence or phrase you’re writing, you put the period or comma inside the quotation mark in brackets – [.] – to indicate that there’s more to the sentence you’re quoting. (This is to prevent people from misleadingly quoting parts of sentences, or at least to give the reader a chance to look up the whole thing to see if it’s an accurate representation of what the sentence said.)
And that’s what I do.
wjca
Morons should not be given access to oxygen in either case.
WaterGirl
@CliosFanBoy: heh.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@CliosFanBoy: did you click the link?
Doc H
@JCJ:
I agree – wailing on someone = beat them mercilessly. I’ve always figured it came from music – wailing sax to wailing on guitar to wailing on nazis. But, looks like there are some votes in favor of marine mammals. Go figure…
wjca
Wail on . . . and on and on…
It’s just sad really
MattF
@dnfree: Like the Wailin’ Jennys.
scav
@JaySinWA: Well, nobody had punctuation for a long while (nor spaces between words). Have fun with that (plus right to left order, left to right order, or both, alternating order). And, while copping to a complete lack of certainty was to what grammatical rules cover or not, the reason word order doesn’t matter in some languages is that the nouns change spelling to indicate if they are the object or the subject of the action/verb (which is usually performing its own gymnastics about how many are doing it). So there are rules governing that sort of stuff, just different sorts of rules. English relies on word order to clarify whats going on.
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
Depends on how I feel at the time and what I am responding to. Some words just don’t have a fixed spelling.
Just like, sometimes ok. Sometimes okay. Sometimes even okeydokey.
Mike in Pasadena
Maybe rewrite the sentences, in one case without quotation marks. How does one spell honey? I always ask the kitties, “who is hungry?” before I feed them. Whatever works best to communicate. Put the punctuation where it pleases you.
Steve in the ATL
@dnfree: there’s a baby on my flight wailing on
Paul in KY
@patrick II: Maybe he was fucking with you?
Tarragon
That’s so weird, I was taught punctuation inside the quotes and hated it. I assumed everyone was taught that way.
At some point I read about logical quoting, loved it, and gone that way since.
I did a quick search for logical quoting and found this great explanation which describes punctuation inside the quotes as being “conventional quoting”.
JaySinWA
@Doc H: Merriam Webster wades in with whale, wail, and wale.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/usage-of-whale-wail-wale
Much more at the link.
Paul in KY
@patrick II: Wonderful act to see in concert. Gabriella is one of the greatest guitarists I’ve ever seen.
Paul in KY
@trollhattan: Huzzah!
peter
@R’Chard:
Many years ago a colleague of mine reported this exchange at a meeting of the American Philosophical Association, during discussion following a paper on negation:
A: “Everyone knows that when you negate a negative the result is positive — a double negative is a positive. But no one believes that a double positive is a negative.”
B. “Yah, yah…”
Another Scott
@dnfree: But what about…
BTW, and on-topic, check the comments. He wasn’t Kite Surfing or Wind Surfing. He was Wing Foiling.
Cheers,
Scott.
Brachiator
@dnfree:
One online dictionary has this:
I think that “whale on” will become “wail on” because there is a trend to simplify spelling and to spell words like they sound, ignoring prior authorities.
evodevo
@WaterGirl:
“yes” would be “yea”, as in “yea” or “nay” on the amendment..
Paul in KY
@JaySinWA: It has some. There’s a sorta famous story (probably made up) about a cleric who worked for Edward III (or maybe his mother and her lover at the time) who sent the keepers of Edward II a note in Latin. It had no punctuation and the translation could be either ‘Do not kill Edward it would be a bad thing’ or ‘Kill Edward it would be a good thing’, based on where you put the commas. Edward II was murdered.
MattF
@peter: An old story. The original ‘Yeah, yeah’ guy was Sidney Morgenbesser.
JoyceH
@catclub:
Something that I remembered just recently. There was a time when my sisters and I were kids that we thought it was incredibly humorous to pronounce the word picturesque as “picture-skew”. Went on vacation, one of those 1960s vacations where you get in the car and drive and drive and drive, and you drive through Scenery and from the back seat, three little girls exclaim in unison, “Oooh, picture-skew!” How our parents restrained from strangling us, I’ll never know.
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL: If that’s a sentence to illustrate the use of the word, great.
If you are on a flight with a wailing baby, you have my condolences!
evodevo
@JCJ:
You whale away on someone’s nether regions or whatever…means flog. Wail is a cry
Paul in KY
@dnfree: You might ‘wail on your bad fortune’ or something like that.
WaterGirl
@Tarragon: I love this! I had no idea that this “conventional” and “logical” discussion was even a thing.
This makes me happy.
Another Scott
@MattF: Thanks for the pointer. That was great.
Cheers,
Scott.
Dr Daniel Price (Saint Vincent)
@WaterGirl: The aforementioned “ACS style” prefers the logical to the conventional construction.
Musing while peregrinating: Esperanto is nominally a language but is functionally a grammar.
Other MJS
@mrmoshpotato: To be clear, I use Grammarly, but it’s slavish to the grammar rule being mocked here.
KSinMA
@scav: Fascinating!
CCL
Late to the thread, of course.
@Journeywoman:
Same.
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Yup. Still haven’t upgraded from 15th edition, so I have no idea what the current edition (is it the 17th???)
@Journeywoman:
…also which edition of said style guide.
@wjca:
Thanks to the 18th century (??? ) England’s emerging middle class who wanted to sound posh.
TriassicSands
Hey, Watergirl. It is 2023. Spelling and punctuation are passé. Writing clear, easily understood statements and questions no longer matters. Saving time is all that counts. Soon, we’ll be communicating entirely with emojis and initials. Oh, and grunts.
Martin
I learned punctuation inside the quotation mark, back in the 70s.
patrick II
@Paul in KY:
I thought maybe he was, but the way he said “where do you think I’m ” as if it was going to surprise makes me think k not. But honestly maybe so.
WaterGirl
@TriassicSands: I would give you the thumbs up emoji as a joke, except that emoji totally creeps me out for some reason. I HATE IT.
WaterGirl
@patrick II: I am arriving at the “pretty sure he was fucking with you” spot.
wjca
When it comes to fabric, I try to avoid wale….
patrick II
@Paul in KY:
I’m a big fan. My wife and I went to a concert and sat in the first row not five feet away from the stage. Just two acoustic guitars and they got everyone up and dancing. Gabby’s right hand turns invisible even when you are up close.
Did you know they won the Grammy for best contemporary instrumental a couple of years back?
lowtechcyclist
@Steve in the ATL:
While the three sets you mention can all be put into one-to-one correspondence with each other and therefore have the same cardinality (countably infinite; IOW can be put into one-to-one correspondence with the counting numbers), there are infinities that are demonstrably bigger. The real numbers, for instance, cannot be put into one-to-one correspondence with the counting numbers. And there are sets that can’t be put into one-to-one correspondence with either the counting numbers or the reals.
Math can be weird.
ETA: Looks like several people beat me to it!
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: Now we get to decide who is the best explainer of weird math stuff. :-)
lowtechcyclist
@scav:
“Oyez, oyez, all rise for the courtroom scene, take one!”
CAM-WA
@WaterGirl:
In your first sentence, the question mark goes outside the closing quote because what’s in the quotation marks is not a question.
lowtechcyclist
Hey, I’m an all-purpose pedant! I can pedant for power, speed, or average; I can pedant to all fields; I can pedant from the infield, outfield, or the mound, where I can pedant starting or in relief. Give me a nit, and I’ll pick it every which way. ;-)
Central Planning
@lowtechcyclist:
If you think one space or two is bad, there are religious wars in the Python programming language about tabs vs spaces and 2 spaces vs 4 spaces for indenting.
OlFroth
@WaterGirl: In a nutshell, it always goes within the quotation marks, unless you are citing a source for the quotation, in which case it goes after the citation.
WaterGirl
@CAM-WA: Thank you! That’s what makes sense to me.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist:
And you think that’s a selling point? :-)
wjca
@WaterGirl:
Maybe he’s just a fan of picketing
Doug
@japa21:
@WaterGirl:
In contrast to the claim in comment #109, “Hear, hear!” is the correct form. It comes from the British parliament, where the expression was originally “Hear him! Hear him!” (Parliament’s members were all male at the time.) This is attested by Wikipedia, drawing on the publisher Random House as a source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear,_hear
JaySinWA
@wjca: http://MusicMan Pick.aLotTalk.aLittleMore – YouTube
WeimarGerman
I think we may need a separate thread on infinities, Cantor, and odd math, or is it maths ?
KenK
Hooray -> yea.
yeah, yeah is yes
”honey”. Punctuation goes outside of quotes
…”who’s hungry?”. Question within a statement, ends with a period.
finally, I took the time to answer questions, not I took the time and answered questions.
toine
There is no reason to have quotation marks around honey. Problem solved.
toine
@JaySinWA:
use u’s in our words as God intended.
wjca
Unless it’s labelled “honey,” but there is some question as to whether it actually is. Compare, for example, what is labeled “cheese food”
toine
@JCJ:
Mr. Keneally the greatest English teacher ever always told us ” Never use commas. None of you has the slightest idea how to use them.” Being great advice I have always followed this dictum. :-)
Mr. Bemused Senior
@MattF: thanks for the link! I knew the story but not its origin.
Another Scott
@KenK:
Not when it’s said with sarcasm.
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
sab
@JaySinWA:I have been told by Canadians that Canadians tend to be relaxed about this stuff, because what they read varies between English and American spelling and style usage, depending on publishing supply chains.
sab
@Jeffro: I have been intending to buy and then read and refer to that for quite a while.
Might put it on my birthday wish list so I can get it as an actual book not an e-book.
FooDonFah
One of my favorite things because I have no life.
1. To the lesser of your questions…it’s obviously “yay.” “Yeh” is a very informal “yes,” and “yaaa” is bizarre and sounds like “yes” for people doing budget rental German accents or something.
2. Periods and commas always go inside the quotes in standard American English (which is the One True Solution). This is also the predominant rule in British English, although the alternate rule that they only go inside the quotes if they are part of the quoted material has stronger acceptance there.
In all variants of English, exclamation marks and question marks only go inside the quotes if they are part of the quoted material.
To your first example: How do you spell the word “honey”?
This is correct. The question mark is not part of the quoted material, so it goes outside the quotes. It also obviously forms the punctuation for the sentence.
To your second example: At feeding time, I always ask the kitties “Who’s hungry?”
This is also correct. The question mark is part of the quoted material, so it goes inside the quotes here.
When punctuation is inside the quotes and also comes at the end of the sentence, it always also serves as the punctuation for the sentence, even if the punctuation for the sentence would normally be different. E.g., Example 2 is a declarative sentence ending with a quoted a question. You would normally end a declarative sentence with with a period. However, you would not put one in that sentence, because the it actually, properly ends with the quoted question mark.
Paul in KY
@patrick II: Was just a thought. He probably wasn’t.
Paul in KY
@patrick II: I had heard they won a Grammy. Awesome seats you had. To me the most amazing thing about her playing is the way she raps out a beat on the guitar body, all the while she is whaling away on it. Just amazing!
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: Your description was quite pedantic. Kudos!
Nelson
My three favorite things are eating children and ignoring commas.