Posts tagged: WRITING

Congratulations to Adrian and Jacob on the launch of their GFDL-licensed book on Django. From the Django blog:

This is a pre-release, which means we’re actively looking for comments, typo fixes, corrections and other suggestions from readers like you, all around the world. We’ll try to incorporate your suggestions into the final product, which will be published by Apress early next year. Amazon.com is accepting preorders for the print edition, and the number of preorders so far has been astounding.

With English teachers for parents and a degree in literature, I’ve always felt a certain burden to uphold consistent, proper English usage. Over the past few years, though, one of the firm rules that I learned in my younger days – that commas and periods go inside quotation marks – has become impossible for me to follow.

This is an American rule, one that is mostly, if not entirely, about typographic appearance. If you place a comma or a period after the closing quotation mark, it’s kind of floating there in space. Placed before, it’s nestled tidily against the preceding letter. The American use of double-quotes intead of single makes this contrast even more dramatic.

‘Twas google/ig, and the odeos
Did skype and quimble in engrade:
All simpy were the buzzingos,
And the feedpaths carbonmade.

“Beware the Frapprflock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Yubnub bird, and shun
The del.icio.us Offertrax!”

He took his orkut sword in hand:
Long time the slawesome foe he sought –
So rested he by the Numsum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.