From: Omega (omega@pacific.net)
Date: Mon Jan 27 1997 - 16:47:28 MST
Alexander,
> Another grammatical issue:
>
> There is a funny rule in American English, that punctuation marks should be
> inserted inside the quotation marks, as in: [ I know words "green,"
> " blue," and "red". ] Here the connections *between* semantic objects
> "green" "blue" "red" (quotes are parts of these objects!) are somehow
> put *inside* these objects! This looks like some collective grammatical
> insanity.
Insanity is certainly the right word. I wouldn't lose any sleep over this
stuff. All that matters is how effectively we can convey our meaning while
minimizing the effort of doing so. Word meaning is important, otherwise
people wind up comparing apples to oranges, but this grammatical idiocy is
just that. Let's just let the language evolve.
-- In the Ecstatic Service of Life -- Omega
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