Conference thebay::joyoflex

    Notes> SET REPLY=TANGENT
    
    What DOES "zenophobe" mean?
    
    I guess someone who is afraid of Zeno and/or Zeno's Paradox.
    
    A "xenophobe" is someone who is afraid of stangers, foreigners,
    aliens, etc.
    
                                                   
                  /
                 (  ___
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                 /
    
    Notes> SET REPLY=NOTANGENT

    Re: .0
    
    And, speaking of tangents:
    
    	"notesfile" is spelled "notefile".

< Note 235.3 by 4GL::LASHER "Working..." >
                                  -< Noted. >-

<    Re: .0
    
<    And, speaking of tangents:
    
<    	"notesfile" is spelled "notefile".


Just to pick a nit:

	I believe you meant, "notesfile" is spelled "notefile."

The (.) is *always* inside.

Mark 

    
    	I thought "notesfile" was spelled "conference". :^)
    
    	(I read somehwere that the closing quote didn;t include the
    	terminating punctuation.)
    
    zack
    

    I'm sure it was mentioned in the previous note about quotes and
    punctuation, but I believe that the formal rules still state that
    *all* punctuation is supposed to be placed inside the quotation
    marks, whether it's part of the quoted material or not.
    
    However, there seems to be a growing resistance to this, and many
    people (myself included) place the punctuation as befits the logical
    structure of the sentence.
    
    --- jerry

Actually the rules are different for "? & ! & ;"

Periods and commas always go inside the " "

? & ! & ; sometimes do.

I'm a big fan of functional grammar, that is I care most about those grammar
points that contribute to clarity.  But I have to say that I am rather fond of
the rule regarding periods and commas *always* going inside quotes. 

This rule is (a) One of the few rules of grammar I know and (b) One of an even
more select group of English grammar rules that has no exceptions -- it's
always true!  So please don't muck around with it. 

Mark

    re .7:
    
    just because it is the only consistant rule and the only rule you
    know are not good reasons to maintain that rule.
    
    I think that it is ridiculous to put the period (.) inside the quote
    when it is not a part of that which is being quoted.
    
    The use of quotes when referring to a word (as in "notefile") should
    be regarded as a "word" or entity in its own right, and would thus
    be incorrect to include the punctuation in the quotes, unless the
    punctuation was actually part of the entity.
    
    Thus by saying  '..."notefile."' you imply that the word includes
    the period regardless of its position in the sentence.
    
                                                   
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    re -1
     
     I agree, look at the mess you get into if the quoted item  has  its 
     own punctuation 
     
     ie ........."clusters etc.."
     
     should be ........"clusters etc.".

     David
     

    When quoting several paragraphs in a row it used to be [is it still?]
    the rule to put double open quotes only at the start of each paragraph
    and at the end of the final one.  
    
    Not only could this shaft lexical scanners but it seems illogical,
    or does it?
    
    	RMM
    

     "Hmmm--that's really a hard one to answer.
    
     "I've written them this way for a number of years, in a few stories
    that I have thrown together.
    
     "I've never sold any of my work (although I have lots of nice
    rejection letters).  Maybe it's because of strange punctuation
    techniques."

    This little rule, which I suppose is still in effect, is used primarily
    in novels when somebody is making a long discourse.
    
    The rationale is that it reminds the reader that the next paragraph
    is a continuation of the previous speech.
    
    If you are not a novelist but want to quote something several
    paragraphs long, use indented paragraphs to avoid the quotation
    marks.                                      
    
    -bs

    Smith, in his discussion of ancient oil deposits, pointed out that:
    
        There's no fuel like an old fuel. And some fuels show flames
        at the slightest provocation.
        
        And so forth.
    
    This was disputed by Jones, etc.; you get the idea.
        

    re .8:
    
  >  just because it is THE ONLY CONSISTANT RULE and THE ONLY RULE you
  >  know are not good reasons to maintain that rule.
   
Ah come on folks *It was just a little joke* 


But seriously (a sorta flame coming)

I don't see how you can label a convention either good or bad let alone 
RIDICULOUS.  It's just an agreement to do things a certain way. 

 >    I think it is ridiculous to put the period (.) inside the quote
 >    when it is not a part of that which is being quoted.
   
It's like driving on the right or left side of the road.  The convention your 
country selects is not a good or bad decision -- it's the convention of the
land.  And it doesn't work real well for a person to decide that the US should
be like the UK and take it upon him/herself to ride on the "wrong" side. 

The point you're trying to make, that it is better or righter to put the
period either inside or outside quotes simply doesn't hold water.  I don't
believe that where you put the period will have much, if any affect on clarity.

>    Thus by saying  '..."notefile."' you imply that the word includes
>    the period regardless of its position in the sentence.

What is important is since this is a pretty trivial point, with virtually no
impact on clarity, let's all do it the same way.  In a sense we're back to the
earlier discussion of, why create a new word (or new rule) IN THOSE CASES where
the existing words (or rules) work just fine. 

    (sorta flame off)

Mark

    It IS a ridiculous rule. It does not work "just fine" or the issue
    would never have come up. It seems fair and reasonable to treat
    a quoted word as an entity (word) seperate unto itself. 
    
    Forcing the period inside the quotes is like doing thi.s
    
                                                   
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    Re .14:
    
    > I don't see how you can label a convention either good or bad let
    > alone RIDICULOUS.  It's just an agreement to do things a certain way. 
    
    Surely you would agree that a convention to drive on the right on
    odd-numbered days and on the left on even-numbered days would be a bad
    convention.  And if you don't think it is ridiculous, we can make it
    worse.
    
    Knowledge about what punctuation was and was not part of quoted
    material may not have been important in previous times, but information
    processing is becoming more and more important in our society.  It has
    been said that information is power.  So we have different values to
    use now in choosing conventions. 
    
    
    				-- edp 

    Surely, in this day and age of fancy s/w and high-powered computers
    it should certainly be possible to accept any convention at all.
    The fact that a lexical scanner has problems with certain conventions
    is a problem with the scanner, not with the convention.  Some years
    ago a term was coined which I like to use whenever someone tells
    me: "You have to do it this way because the computer won't do it
    any other way."  Cybercrud.
    

    Re .17:
    
    > The fact that a lexical scanner has problems with certain conventions
    > is a problem with the scanner, not with the convention.
    
    Really?  Parse this for me please:
    
    	In line 294, "mov #ie.nfw,errcod" should read "mov
    	#ie.nfw,errcod+34."
        
    
    				-- edp

    Re .19:
    
    Excuse me?  .18 displays the current-becoming-old convention of always
    putting periods inside quotes.  There is the convention, there is a
    sentence obeying it, please tell me whether or not the period is part
    of the quoted material.  If you can't do that, tell me why you can't.
    
    
    				-- edp 

      Re .18,.20
      
      .18>
            In line 294, "mov #ie.nfw,errcod" should read "mov
            #ie.nfw,errcod+34."

      The terminal period before the terminal quotation mark is clearly
      not part of the quoted text.  I would assume the author were
      adhering to the illogical rule that terminal periods always
      go inside a quotation, and if the author wanted to show that
      the period were really part of the quoted material, he (or
      she) would have rephrased the sentence to something like
      
          In line 294, "mov #ie.nfw,errcod+34." should replace the
          existing "mov #ie.nfw,errcod." 
      
      Here, it would not matter whether the terminal period were
      part of the quoted material to be removed/ignored or not.

      Dave C.

      Re .18,.20
      
      .18>
            In line 294, "mov #ie.nfw,errcod" should read "mov
            #ie.nfw,errcod+34."

      The terminal period before the terminal quotation clearly is
      part of the quoted text.  Since the quoted material is "computer
      text," we can assume that the author would have placed the
      period outside the quotation marks if it were not part of the
      quoted material.

      Dave C.

    In this specific example "mov #ie.nfw,errcod+34." has a totally
    different _meaning_ to `"mov #ie.nfw,errcod+34".'  Since this is PDP-11
    code, the '34' in the first case is decimal, and in the second case
    octal.  The line should read
    
    		... should read "mov #ie.nfw,errcod+34.".
    
    (don't you think?)
    
    Jeff.

The IMPORTANT thing is that the resulting text be understandable, 
especially unambiguous. The closing period in the previous examples happens 
to be unambiguous if read at least three times, but if it takes three 
readings to understand what is being said, are we really communicating?

Since computers are notoriously picky about syntax, especially about quoted 
strings, it behooves us not to rock the boat by inserting periods into 
quoted strings whenever we are describing computer inputs and outputs. We 
do so at really serious risk of being misunderstood BOTH by computers and 
by people.

    I'd be willing to write off .18 as being invalid because it doesn't
    include a _period_, grammatically speaking, within the quoted text.
    
    The "dot" character used to indicate base uses the same ASCII value
    as the period, looks like a period, and has the same keyboard position,
    but it's not used as a sentence terminator or, for that matter,
    decimal point.  It's an arbitrary use of a character within an
    arbitrary, human-created machine-readable language; to whit, an
    assembler.
    
    Since the sentence already is invoking a non-English dialect (MACRO-11
    isn't English to most of us, you know), applying English rules based
    upon what it _looks like_ generates an invalid critique.

    Re .25:
    
    The statement made which the example was in response to was that a
    parser which cannot handle certain situations is bad, but that a
    convention cannot be.  The statement made no reference to English
    specifically.
    
    And if it is not English, what do you propose we should write our
    manuals in?
    
    
    				-- edp