Quotation marks: Why the English rules are Wrong.

For those of you familiar with the English language rules regarding quotes, you know that you are supposed to put punctuation inside of the quotes. This is bad.

I'll start with a simple sentence; consider this example: Did you read the article "How David Beat Goliath?"

The meaning of the question mark at the end is ambiguous. Is the sentence a question, or does the article have a question as its title? In the English language, these are punctuated the same way.

What if you put that question mark on the outside of the quotes like this: Did you read the article "How David Beat Goliath"? Here, we've made it clear to the reader that the sentence is a question and the article title is not. According to the English language, that's wrong. According to me, the English language is wrong.

Where this gets messy is in nested questions. Try this sentence: The teacher just asked, "Which students read the article 'Why do we forget things?'"

I'm not even sure how that should be punctuated. The article and the teacher's statement are both questions, but that isn't clear from the punctuation. Given the choice, I'd use two question marks (one for each), but I'm pretty sure that doing so violates the language rules.

"So what?" you think. "I can still tell what's being said."

Yes, you can in this example. Let's modify it a little bit with a shortened quote: "You read 'Why do we forget things?'" Is the speaker informing the listener that they read the article, or are they saying it with a questioning tone? When writing dialogue, punctuation such as question or exclamation marks empower the writer to show the tone in which something was said. When the language makes it ambiguous what your punctuation belongs to, the writer's hands are tied.

It gets even better, though, when you get into the fine rules for quotes because not all punctuation is supposed to go inside of the quotes. A semicolon, for example, is supposed to go outside of the quotes. Why? What is accomplished by making arbitrary rules on what goes inside and what goes outside for people to remember?

All of the rules about quote punctuation placement could be entirely encompassed by a single rule: "If it's part of the quote, place it inside of the quotation marks. Otherwise, place it outside of them."

Thus, I've chosen to do all of my writing according to that rule, unless it's absolutely necessary for me to please some English professor. Join me, and perhaps we can turn the English rules into something more sensible.