"KILL ME A SON!," GOD SAID TO ABRAHAM. "WHAT?," ASKED ABRAHAM, "YOU MUST BE PUTTIN' ME ON." "YOU DO WHAT YOU WANT TO, BUT NEXT TIME I SEE YOU, YOU BETTER RUN!," REPLIED GOD. "WHERE DO YOU WANT THIS KILLING DONE?," ASKED ABRAHAM. Saddle up, grammar cowboys, the Friday Grammar Rodeo is starting. Which of these passages is correct, and which are mispunctled?
- "How much," she said. "For three hundred dollars I'll do it."
- "Is something wrong?" she said. Of course there is. "You're still alive!" she said. Oh, do I deserve to be?
- "There must be some kind of way out of here!," said the joker to the thief.
We know that punctuation belongs inside the quotation marks, unless you have the misfortune of being born in England. The dilemma is what to do with the punctuation if you are following the quotation with an attribution -- "he said"; "she asked"; "they shouted in unison." Ordinarily, it's not a problem -- we just drop the period and put a comma before the close-quote. But if we want to employ a question mark or an exclamation point (assume the propriety of the latter), then what? Omit, question mark/exclamation point only, or the weird double-punctuation thing with the mark/point followed by a comma?
The Orange Bible, perhaps surprisingly,
thinks that #3 above is the way to go: "The sixteenth edition of
CMOS recommends using a comma after a question mark if it would normally be required." This looks the most wrong to me, and consensus at
ALOTT5MA HQ is that #2 is the best option. Are we wrong?
I have never seen double punctuation like #3. I agree with HQ that #2 is the proper way to do it.
ReplyDeleteYep, #2 is the way I'd go. 3 just looks ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteI think CMOS is referring to something else there -- when the punctuation mark is part of a title, rather than when it's being used to punctuate. For example: Yesterday I received an email inviting me to audition in person for "Jeopardy!," and I plan to attend.
ReplyDelete6.119 Commas with question marks or exclamation points
When a question mark or exclamation point appears at the end of a quotation where a comma would normally appear, the comma is omitted. When, however, the title of a work ends in a question mark or exclamation point, a comma should also appear if the grammar of the sentence would normally call for one. This departure from previous editions of the manual overrides aesthetic considerations not only to recognize the syntactic independence of titles but also the potential for clearer sentence structure—especially apparent in the final example, where the comma after Help! separates it from the following title. (The occasional awkward result may require rewording.)
#2 is the way to go, and I've got a pack of Catholic nuns to support me on this.
ReplyDelete#3 looks less odd than #2 to me.
ReplyDeleteOh. The examples being referred to there are:
ReplyDelete<span>“Are you a doctor?” asked Mahmoud.
but
“Are You a Doctor?,” the fifth story in Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, treats modern love.
All the band’s soundtracks—A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, Yellow Submarine, and Magical Mystery Tour—were popular.</span>
I cannot see any other option than #2.
ReplyDeleteAnother vote for 2. Any confusion about whether the post-quotation attribution is part of the sentence is usually resolved by the fact that the post-quotation attribution is in lower case.
ReplyDelete"How much?" she asked. (Not: "How much?" She asked.)
A little less clear if a capitalized word starts the attribution:
"How much?" Eliza asked. Yet I still find this preferable to "How much?," Eliza asked. I suspect, however, that this is part of the reason #3 is recommended by some; it does avoid ambiguity. Seems clunky, though.
All apologies to the original songwriter, but I'd rewrite it to:
ReplyDeleteThe joker said to the thief, "There must be some kind of way out of here!"
thereby neatly avoiding the question altogether.
As Spacewoman points out to me, I appear to be in a tiny minority (she calls it "wrong," not "a tiny minority") who believe that it looks ugly to capitalize the first word of quoted sentences when they're not the beginning of a sentence:
ReplyDelete1. God said, "You do what you want to but ...." (majority/right)
2. God said, "you do what you want to but ...." (minority/wrong)
But then how would the Final Five Cylons find each other if the rhythm of the song was that bad?
ReplyDelete/nerded
Would have picked 3 before listening to all of you geniuses.
ReplyDelete#2, also accepting Adam's exception.
ReplyDeleteExtra credit for the wonderful word "mispunctled." I feel incentivized to regularly use it.
Another #2 vote!
ReplyDeleteI'm with the #2 people. Why would we disagree with HQ?
ReplyDeleteI am 99% sure that "mispunctled" is a neologism coined by Nicholson Baker. Google shows only three results, all of them written by me. Yet I know I didn't make it up. I did make up the words "malpunctle" and "benpunctle," figuring that if "mispunctle" were going to be a word, the other two must be as well.
ReplyDeleteHendrix already screwed up the rhythm by adding "kind of" to the Dylan original.
ReplyDeleteI'm firmly in Camp #2. Section 6.119 really seems to be the CMOS section that is most applicable to Isaac's examples, which are quoted material rather than appositive phrases (as in the question to CMOS that prompted the discussion). The second and third examples Adam B. quotes demonstrate very specific contexts in which adding the comma might help and in which an argument could be constructed that the inherent weirdness of [end punctuation+comma] isn't quite so glaring.
ReplyDeleteAnd congrats to you, Adam, on Jeopardy! (see what I did there?) -- apparently, you did better than 8 wrong answers on the online test, because I'm pretty sure that's where I wound up, and no e-mail for me so far. Anyway, I was in a similar position as you three years ago and went to the NYC audition but ultimately did not get the call -- this despite the announcement by the contestant wranglers in NYC that all of us from the audition day were going to be on their list. Hope you fare better!
Does the Bear Mccreary version that "kind of" in there though?
ReplyDeleteIsaac, I'm with you on this one.
ReplyDeleteI vote for No. 2!
ReplyDeleteIs there not always a comma after "of course"? Of course, there is. No?
ReplyDeleteIIRC, the words are just from dialogue, but McCreary's score overall is more similar to the Hendrix version than the Dylan version. In any event, I found the whole thing pretty silly.
ReplyDeleteI just posted and deleted a comment that said it looks wrong. I think that the point of the sentence would dictate whether I would use the comma:
ReplyDelete1. This would make sense only if there were a reciprocal economic benefit to the donor. Of course, there is. The donor receives a valuable canvas tote.
2. Is there still any reason to watch ANTM? Of course there is. We watch to see what new sadistic torture Tyra visits on the contestants. Live bees and declarations that their mothers put them up for adoption out of indifference, not need? Priceless.
In the first sentence, the "of course" is used as kind of a weak form of "but," indicating that the following passage is obvious but possibly contrary to an assumption. In the second sentence, "of course" is for emphasis, a marginally less illiterate-looking punctuation mark. So I kind of see it both ways.
Ew. 1.
ReplyDeleteI'd go with #2 too, but it wouldn't get my (heh) English up if you added commas, outside the quotations, for the clarity sought in vain by advocates of #3. No one has ever said "There must be some kind of way out of here!," If they had, no one would have noticed.
ReplyDeleteOnce we get premorse in the dictionary, we can work on mispunctle.<span> </span>
ReplyDeleteI'm with spacewoman.
ReplyDeleteAdam C., the general belief (unconfirmed) is that there is a passing score on the online test, and of the people who beat that passing score, a random group are selected to receive the emails. Because they can't invite everyone who passes, or they'd have too many auditioners.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Genevieve - the idea that there's some random chance built into the process will help me stop kicking myself for not coming up with Lake Baikal, or Dvorak, in crunch time.
ReplyDeleteAlso, remember: the casting goal is not to find the best competitors, but the folks who would be most fun to watch.
ReplyDelete