Interesting Grammar Fact

[Amy W]

I thought this forum is one of the very few places in the world where this would be considered interesting, so I thought I'd post it.

I'm Canadian, but thanks to years of practice I can write like an American - except when it comes to placing punctuation in quotation marks. My American grammar checker is always moving my periods inside of the quotation marks when I want to place them outside. Here's why:

*There are peculiar typographical reasons why the period and comma go inside the quotation mark in the United States. The following explanation comes from the "Frequently Asked Questions" file of alt.english.usage: "In the days when printing used raised bits of metal, "." and "," were the most delicate, and were in danger of damage (the face of the piece of type might break off from the body, or be bent or dented from above) if they had a '"' on one side and a blank space on the other. Hence the convention arose of always using '."' and ',"' rather than '".' and '",', regardless of logic." This seems to be an argument to return to something more logical, but there is little impetus to do so within the United States.
(posted from
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/ ... tation.htm)

So grammar rules were broken to protect the typefaces in the States. Makes you wonder if printing presses in Canada and the UK spent a fortune replacing their periods and their commas.

[BennyTheWriter]

Fascinating stuff indeed! It's interesting how historical necessities have carried over into everyday customs that everyone takes for granted.

[Evelyn]

We Americans [U.S. citizens only] don't find it hard to change [inches, miles, gallons], nor are we backwards in any way [Asia is a whole continent?].

Many thanks to the rest of the world for tolerating us, I say.