I’ve noticed recently as I write this blog that I’ve been struggling with something. It’s started coming up in my other writing too (which is pretty much just GChat these days… I don’t get out much), and it’s driving me nuts. I’m not used to struggling, because I am awesome.
What, you ask, has caused me so much consternation? Thanks for caring; I’ll tell you! I used to be really good at knowing where to put punctuation when quoting. Now I have no idea.
To give you an example, I was talking to a friend of mine, and I asked him, “How are you doing?” er… I asked him, “How are you doing”? Wait no, I asked him, “How are you doing?”. Or did I tell him “I’m doing fine,”?… er… what?
Anyway, I’m like 98% sure I used to just always know the surprisingly complicated (but fairly logical) rules for punctuating within quotes, but two things have tripped me up. The first is that apparently British folks do it backward, and I know a surprisingly large number of British people. (For instance, my grandmother. Also, no one else.) The second, which is the reason that explains why this struggle started only recently, I didn’t realize until today.
I was reading a programming blog (unemployment level: MASTER!), and I noticed something peculiar. The author kept putting their commas after the quotes, like zo:
“Hello”, said the person saying “hello”.
I was confused, and — honestly? — a little bit scared. But then I realized where I’d seen that sort of thing before…
$strCleanName = str_replace($strName, ' ', '');
It’s finally happened: I’ve spent so much time telling machines what to do that I’ve finally lost my humanity.
