Speculative Grammarian Podcast

The Quotta and the Quottiod; by Vére Çélen; From Volume CLI, Number 4, of Speculative Grammarian, October 2006 — It is not news to linguists that particular forms of punctuation can be problematic. One frequent source of considerable friction in certain circles is the unending debate over whether and when (and, increasingly, why) commas and periods go inside or outside quotation marks—especially when they are not actually part of the material to be quoted. Typically careful linguists usually prefer not to include punctuation in a quoted citation form or gloss, while many punctilious punctuationally prescriptivist publishers demand they be (or worse, silently and patronizingly move them) inside. (Read by James Campbell.)