Dear Americans!
American English:
“Carefree” means “free from care or anxiety.”
The full stop / period does not belong to the phrase. ILLOGICAL!
British English:
“Carefree” means “free from care or anxiety”.
The full stop / period belongs to the sentence. LOGICAL!
Case in point! … Point… in case?
English makes no sense.
Vickie Diablos is a postgraduate student in Health Informatics, a hardcore gamer geek and a socially awkward logic and science nerd. She thought keeping a "cool blog" would make her a cool person. Alas. More »
The V elsewhere:
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This entry is filed under Vickie's specials, say what?; tagged English, languages, logic and that's about it. Here, have a trackback URL, too.
Larissa
2 Jun 2008
2:32 pm
Haha, I always put the period after the quotation marks! I’m worried my English teacher will be mad at me for it…
Dee
2 Jun 2008
3:19 pm
I’d usually put the period after the quotes, unless the stuff in the quotes was actually a quote from someone and the period belonged to that sentence.
Then again, I’m the person who puts ‘words’ and letters inside single quotes because, “That’s how we do it in C++!” (A string goes in double quotes, of course.)
Tara
2 Jun 2008
7:19 pm
It is weird X_X;; When I first learned about that, I’d put the period outside the darn quotation marks, but then in college, my professor corrected me on it and that’s when I discovered the whole AE versus BE thing. X_X;; I agree that the BE version looks better and makes more sense. Then again, I prefer BE as oppose to AE, never mind that I am American, mind you.
Hiro
3 Jun 2008
7:16 am
I refuse to accept the British version!
I absolutely refuse!!!
*runs around in circles*
“And yes, the periods after the quotations do go inside the quotation.”
Cuz teh almighty MLA HANDBOOK said so!
And MLA rules the world, these days. Or at least the lives of American high schoolers.
Sara
3 Jun 2008
8:50 am
My girlfriend’s English, she’s always showing me the difference between Brit and ‘American’ English. hahaha.
Jules
3 Jun 2008
10:25 am
LMFAO! But we’re americans, we can do whatever we want!!
Hahaha… just kidding! I don’t get why we do things like that. There’s a lot of things I don’t get about American English… but I just did what I had to make the grade.
Brenda
4 Jun 2008
1:00 am
I got really used to British English since we’ve been trained by the local education system to favour British English over American English. (Never knew why then, now I do.
)
But after leaving the very structured school system into an autonomous university where we’re given leeway as to which English we prefer to use, I’m now using a mixture or both. T.T
Jenny
4 Jun 2008
1:55 am
I totally agree.
Marsha
4 Jun 2008
4:05 pm
LMFAO. Like my ex British boyfriend likes to say, there is no such thing as American English, only British English. I have to agree with that,
Americans just remove alphabets from British English and call it American English. What a bunch of crap, 
:x
Fatima
5 Jun 2008
10:36 am
Ever since I learned about the .” in school (and we’ve always followed American English), I can’t write it any other way. Blame it on my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I just HAVE to correct it. But yes, “. is definitely logical compared to .”
Robbie
6 Jun 2008
1:14 am
I prefer British English in general, but my American Professors don’t much like it when I write my paper against MLA standards…
Amanda
7 Jun 2008
12:17 am
I always use the full stop after the quotation marks… it just looks better and makes more logical sense in my head. Plus, we use British English here. (REAL English, I tell you! *Pouts*)
Ashley
7 Jun 2008
1:35 am
Well, I always put my period inside the quotation marks. I haven’t much thought about it. That’s just what I was taught to do. I hate all the different variations for grammar that exist out there. No wonder some people can’t spell or write. I do not spell “theater” the way my American English spell check wants me to though. I prefer “theatre.”
Honey
8 Jun 2008
11:17 am
I’ve always put the period after the quotation mark and I always will. I refuse to put it inside unless (as somebody said before) it belongs to the quote, though I put a full stop after the period and the quotation mark (i.e. “Hello.”.), but only if it’s extremely necessary.
That’s something that’s always bothered me. It makes much more sense it being outside, at least for me. It’s finishing your sentence, not the word / phrase you’re quoting!
The same goes for brackets, in my head it will always look better if the full stop is outside them (and once again, it makes more sense for me).
Becca
9 Jun 2008
3:30 am
I was taught to put the . after the ” . Even if it belongs to the quote I was taught that it goes outside the “
Rebecca
9 Jun 2008
9:46 am
hmm i never noticed that.. me no like engrish either.
CrisPea
10 Jun 2008
12:24 am
And nonsense makes English.
Daisy
10 Jun 2008
5:24 am
How about slang, colloquialisms, etc? What are your favorites or least favorites? I’d love to hear about that.
(Until you wrote that, I’d never noticed!)
Hannah
10 Jun 2008
9:59 am
I do it the British English way. It just makes more sense.
Robmarie
10 Jun 2008
11:22 am
I hate whenever that happens! No matter how many times I ask professors about it, I always forget. When in doubt, I always put the periods inside the quotations, though — because it looks pReTTiEr *hair twirl* *gum bubble pops*
Sarah
10 Jun 2008
3:10 pm
Haha, being British I use British English, but you know, my opinion is that you should use the appropriate form depending on where you’ve been born and/or brought up. Neither is really any more “right” than the other, these days.
Let’s hope this doesn’t turn into yet another Britain vs. the USA debate, though… those are always tiresome.
Raelith
11 Jun 2008
12:32 am
I used to the BE version because it makes so much more sense to me (and still does). However, ever since being corrected in English class when I was a kid (or something… I can’t quite remember when exactly. =_=;) my OC side (I’m too used to it) won’t allow me to write my periods outside my quotations.
Oh well, it’s tan American and British culture thing. At least I’d know which one to use in the event that I’d have to write stuff like that for them. (Which is sort of unlikely) :3
Dani
11 Jun 2008
4:15 am
Oh my God, I agree with this. I’m a bit of a grammar nazi myself, and seeing people do that seriously bothers me! I suppose it’s because it’s just how I was raised… I guess I use “British English”, not “American English”.
Jen
12 Jun 2008
8:58 am
I would have to agree wholeheartedly on the whole English not being very logical. If it was, it’d all be faneticulee spelled, and no one would have to worry.
Tro
12 Jun 2008
1:02 pm
I’d definitely put the period after the quotes but I’m from Canada so I’m not sure if thats how it’s taught here.
Heather
13 Jun 2008
2:13 am
If I remember right, I believe I was taught to put the punctuation inside the quotes.. I never did though for the reasons above.
Does this have to do with not everyone having maps?
Billy
14 Jun 2008
7:49 am
I put the dot after the quotation marks. But the dot in the quotation marks is more commonly used. I don’t know why though. It’s not correct.
Emma
16 Jun 2008
2:56 am
I have a war with microsoft products because the stupid spellchecker keeps switching British English to American English.
Jmar
17 Jun 2008
11:49 pm
I so much agree with you. The first one’s completely illogical.
Shoko
18 Jun 2008
3:49 am
Mmm…yes, English IS quite confusing. When we’re growing up teachers tell us to “spell out the word” but with all the silent letters and odd spelling, you can’t!
Stepherz
18 Jun 2008
9:20 am
I’ve been dinged in writing for doing both at separate times. English needs some consistency!
Miss Dre
18 Jun 2008
1:10 pm
I only place periods or any punctuation marks before the quotes of it’s a full sentence, but if it’s like the ILLOGICAL one, I place them punctuation marks after the quotes
Ramsha
18 Jun 2008
3:08 pm
Yes, but then you get weird double punctuation, like so: “He said: “OMIGOSH, I’m gonna die!!”.” And that doesn’t look pretty enough to my eyes.
kimba
19 Jun 2008
7:53 pm
Josh
20 Jun 2008
12:10 pm
I always did that unwillingly for English and Journalism teachers. I never saw the logic in the placement of the punctuation in those situations…it doesn’t make sense to me, and I can imagine it could be confusing to people learning the language or unfamiliar with it. Who needs logic when you can fill a language with confusing rules and stipulations?
Melinda
21 Jun 2008
8:57 am
Totally agree! Luckily I’m a user of British English, so I was right all along
Alyssa
24 Jun 2008
1:21 am
so true.
Sarah
25 Jun 2008
10:23 am
Sometimes those online dictionaries have the worst definitions for words. *sighs* I wish they would come up with better ways to define words (other than stating the obvious).
Sean
26 Jun 2008
11:21 am
I always do the latter rather than the former because that is how I was taught by the english teachers. Never had it wrong.
Merinn
28 Jun 2008
10:18 am
I’ve always been taught that it would be like “This.” Now that I think about it, the British method does make sense. Heh.
Quickroute
6 Jul 2008
3:57 pm
You have a seriously funny sense of humour!
Don’t get bogged down with the grammar (American English btw they are a differnt breed!, UK English, Irish English etc) just keep posting like you’ve been doing!