Does the comma outside the quotes in Frank's greeting bother anyone else?

[jedusor]

Maybe I'm just being overly picky, but on LJ's main page, it says "Baaaaah", says Frank. It kind of irks me.

I got up at 6:30 yesterday in order to be at the TLC when it opened at 8, just in case I was supposed to be there then. Good thing I did, too, because I was in fact scheduled to work at 8. Not only that, but I'm scheduled to work at 8 Monday through Friday all semester. Joy. At least they didn't schedule me for Saturdays. I spent most of the morning handing out coupons for free cafeteria stuff and helping new students figure out how to get to their classes.

I have Ms. Scott for political science, and she was very familiar with me, pretty much establishing me as teacher's pet. We'll see how long that lasts. Hopefully, she won't be too pissed at me by the end of class to give me a good recommendation letter. Sharai is in that class with me, which I suspect will save my ass multiple times this semester.

Sociology (Sex Roles and Sexuality) is interesting. The teacher didn't lecture, but had us all sit in a circle and introduce ourselves in great depth. She said that we'll be covering personal stuff during the class, so we need to be comfortable with each other. There were some boring people and some very interesting ones. One girl said perkily, "I'm eighteen, I have a sugar daddy boyfriend who's ten years older than me, and I'm taking this class because I like to have sex!" There's someone I know through All Souls in the class, too.

Someone needs notes taken for them, so I went down to ABLE/Access and signed up as a note-taker. As long as my handwriting is legible for the first three weeks and he doesn't drop out before midterms, I get fifty bucks at the end of the semester... which is pretty sweet for doing something I do already.

I played the "my love is like a storybook story" song from the credits of Princess Bride on my bass last night for about half an hour straight. I'd almost forgotten how incredibly therapeutic playing music is for me. I guess I got so frustrated with the Suzuki crap that I sort of gave up on the violin. I really hate the Suzuki method. It places a lot of emphasis on perfection- I remember my teacher making me play the same measure about fifty times in a row just because I'd settled into the habit of playing the open A string instead of the fourth finger on the D string. It didn't exactly spoil the violin for me forever, and I still play sometimes, but I always feel self-conscious. Milo just feels more peaceful. Besides, it's harder to play a sharp or flat note on a bass. And I love that "storybook story" song.

Comments

[toonhead-npl.livejournal.com]

Maybe Frank is British.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Do they put the comma outside the quotes in Britain? I don't remember noticing that in the copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone I read part of once.

[toonhead-npl.livejournal.com]

Ayup, as far as I've noticed. Makes more sense their way, if you ask me.

[burlesquebunny.livejournal.com]

That doesn't really bother me.... what bothers is that goats obviously say "maaah". I had goats. I would know. Now, if Frank was a sheep, he could say "baaah" all he wanted to and I would pay no mind, as it's what a sheep does. ...I don't know. Maybe he's a trans-species goat or somthing. I had a duck once who thought it was a dog.

[mamagotcha.livejournal.com]

yeah, my goats sounded more like "meh-eh-eh-eh," and sheep were definitely "baaaah."

was your duck a watchduck? (like in "pearls before swine"?)

[burlesquebunny.livejournal.com]

He was actually a little like the duck in Pearls Before Swine. If the goats got to close to some of our chickens he would start quacking and waddling at them. He also managed to become life mates with our dog Emma.

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

The comma outside of quotes is an acceptable usage, especially in British punctuation schemes. It's common in technical documentation here in the US because putting the punctuation outside of the quotes alleviates ambiguity. For example, if one of my docs tells you to enter "string_of_code", and I put my comma or period inside of the quotes, you might wonder if I meant the comma or period as punctuation or part of the code. If you are a typical user, then you're probably just scanning my doc for the code anyway and you probably won't even wonder -- you'll just type it in exactly as I wrote it, including the comma or period.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

In my English classes and at the writing center where I work, it's always been made very clear that punctuation goes inside the quotes unless putting it there would change the meaning of the phrase. In technical writing, that makes a lot of sense.