2 thoughts on “Yeah, this just about sums up what’s going on in our nation…”
Well, I was fixin’ to get angry, but I zoomed in a bit and saw our teacher really did place her apostrophe correctly. It follows the ‘s’ in ‘Students’.
Now, can someone tell me if I’ve placed the period correctly in that last sentence? The rules conflict. 😉
Having donned on my editor’s hat (it’s red), I can say that it depends whether you’re going by the conventions of U.S. English or not. Your use of single quotation marks and the period outside the end quote puts you well within the standards of British English usage. In Murricka, the convention is to use double quotes and put the period inside, although some academic fields prefer the British usage. (The U.S. usage is, at least in part, a holdover from the days of metal type; the period and quote were on a single piece of type, so that’s the way it was done. The objection to it is that the period isn’t actually part of the material being quoted, and hence shouldn’t be inside the quote.)
And note that these are conventions, not rules, and in my book, if you’re consistent, that’s what matters (although if my paying clients tell me to do something different, then I change things according to their preferences).
Well, I was fixin’ to get angry, but I zoomed in a bit and saw our teacher really did place her apostrophe correctly. It follows the ‘s’ in ‘Students’.
Now, can someone tell me if I’ve placed the period correctly in that last sentence? The rules conflict. 😉
Having donned on my editor’s hat (it’s red), I can say that it depends whether you’re going by the conventions of U.S. English or not. Your use of single quotation marks and the period outside the end quote puts you well within the standards of British English usage. In Murricka, the convention is to use double quotes and put the period inside, although some academic fields prefer the British usage. (The U.S. usage is, at least in part, a holdover from the days of metal type; the period and quote were on a single piece of type, so that’s the way it was done. The objection to it is that the period isn’t actually part of the material being quoted, and hence shouldn’t be inside the quote.)
And note that these are conventions, not rules, and in my book, if you’re consistent, that’s what matters (although if my paying clients tell me to do something different, then I change things according to their preferences).