Punctuation

Point me to the one definitive guide to the English language and I might change my mind, but as there isn't one I will continue to consider myself as much as an authority on the language as any other source.

What's source for the goose....

I'll never date another apostrophe, the last one was too possessive.

I have not got a clue about such punctuation, but RC never gets chance to enter into such highly educated matters, so grabbed my chance.

Well that is my one grey cell exhausted, so please carry on Gentlemen, i shall observe from the sidelines....

Of course most authors work will have been extensively edited by their publishers, in accordance with house rules which appear to be that the comma before speech marks is the correct usage, so we don't know what they originally wrote. It is rumoured that some authors are totally dependent on their editors to make good grammar of their very good ideas, and almost all thank their editors.
Of course one is totally free to ignore King Canute and stand in the onrushing tide and be drowned by the sheer weight.
I forgot all my technical English grammar many years ago, and had to research such things as this when I started writing stories rather than reports and letters. I researched this very point and was surprised to discover that the comma is the universally accepted correct usage.
I have to agree that it often feels illogical, but hey that's the thoughts of a science graduate.

I am afraid that I would regard Goodgulf's preferred usage as correct, although somewhat pedantic in relation to current usage.
I would not go to the stake for it however.
We are fortunate that we are not slaves to a prescriptive central authority with English. The final test is whether the words and punctuation used elicit the mental response desired by their author in the minds of the reader, but to do so in the simplest and least ambiguous way.
I am therefore sympathetic to authors who wish, for example to combine ! with ? on occasion, but would seek to avoid this in 99% of cases as overly complex.

Ok, since the 'said' phrase can as well go before the quoted speech as after, try this using the full-stop option:

Tom said. "You need a spanking."

Now does that seem logical?

Yes, point taken. It is however over 55 years since I gained a very respectable grade in English Grammar (and Lit) at O level.
fortunately for my writing I can remember much more of it than I can The Calculus.

It does, but rearranging the clauses, or changing from passive to active voice, often requires changing the punctuation.

To throw some oil on the fire, according to the Little Brown Handbook:

Tom said: "You need a spanking."

is also correct.

Actually, that probably should be:
To throw some oil on the fire, according to the Little Brown Handbook - Tom said: "You need a spanking." - is also correct.
or
To throw some oil on the fire, according to the Little Brown Handbook: "Tom said: 'You need a spanking.'"is also correct.

When it comes to punctuation, the underlying rule is to ensure that the reader can understand what you are say, When posting here I'll often use line breaks and white space to ensure that my meaning is clear. Just as the first generation of printers invented their own ways of making sure that the reader could understand their meaning (i.e. when they invented punctuation).

To take this to a higher level, I might mention that in 2008 "The Language Council of Norway" changed correct usage from

"I don't want a spanking," Mary said

to

"I don't want a spanking", Mary said.

So for us Norwegians it is not a question of full stop or comma, but of where to put the comma! Of course, nobody follows the new rule, not even the few that have heard about it.

To make matters more interesting, exclamation marks and quotation marks still belong inside the quotes:

"I don't want a spanking!" Mary said.

and

"I don't want a spanking?" Mary asked.

There is a logic behind this, and I may offer a spanking to those who can sort it out.

Yes, colon before quoted speech is a valid alternative to a comma.


It's generally accepted that the final punctuation of the quoted speech - comma, question mark or exclamation mark - belongs inside the inverted commas. Interesting that the Norwegian Language Council is trying to change that as regards the comma. Have they said why?

Further complication: if you're quoting a complete, separate sentence, the full stop goes inside the inverted commas; but if only part of it, preceded by narrative, it goes outside. So:

Tom glared at Mary. "You need a spanking."

but

Tom glared at Mary and told her that "she needed a spanking".

This is often disregarded, though.