@Mitch I probably wouldn't vote to close such a question myself, but I would expect it to be closed as P.O.B. Degree of register questions already have a tendency to be closed for that reason, and while we do tolerate pejorative language questions through use/mention distinction, the extra layer of potential contention mitigates more towards that finding. This is not to mention that the code of conduct may bias the admissible answers somewhat. I was on Politics S.E. and saw this recently:
Bigotted viewpoints can be discussed by attributing them to the people who make these statements and not to the posters themselves and by putting their statements into an appropriate context. Example:
Question: The political doctrine of Antifelinism believes that all kittens should be eradica...
While I wouldn't dream of writing the bad answer, the good answer seems a little too censorious to me.
I'm not sure what the point of withholding a link to a referenced resource would be.
@Tonepoet Sure. I guess I feel the some POB questions are ones that should still be answerable here. It seems to me that the SE requirement is a weak excuse here for something that should be here. Frankly that would make any question here POB because the system allows more than one answer. Any nuance on any dictionary meaning would be verboten. I don't think that's right.
I figured it would be better to discuss logical punctuation here. I have been researching a lot recently to find peace, in my mind, with a style of punctuation with quotation marks and punctuation's place along side them. This is what I have arrived at, three systems: "The British System/Logical System", "The American System," and the "even more so logical system".
I have found a couple of posts on here that talks of the latter system, which is very ugly by most standards but seems to be the most logical. here are some examples of this third "system":
Thoughts?
The system, as I said, is based on logic. Things in quotations have their own layer which is embedded.
@MetaEd Oh I get it. You're saying it's not POV because one could -hypothetically- gather data about its pejorativity, right?
I'm guess I'm asking for that data?
@AllexKramer I'm pretty sure that the American system and the British system are well recognized (you don' have to go reinventing the wheel). As to your third system, you haven't really explained how it is different from the British system.
But I'm in total agreement with you that being strict as to use and mention and quoting is the way to go. I don't know if the British system goes as far as you expecting.
@Mitch The British is close to the third one, but different in a few. For example, with the first example, they would've done it like this: "I love bread," she said. Because it's a full sentence, it gets the comma. However, if it wasn't the comma would be outside the quotation marks. In the third system, the logic is so strict that it doesn't ever count punctuation in or out of the quotations as for the whole sentence.
@Mitch so in the first example, it uses a full stop to show that it has ended in quotations. If I adhered to the comma-between-tags rule, the example would have been written as: "I love bread.", she said. Furthermore, with the third "system", you would have sentences like this: She says "I love bread.". If the quotation was a full sentence, that is.
Opinion based questions are questions that won't lead to definitive answers because they're soliciting opinions. For example "double negatives suck, amirite?" or "what's your favorite adverb?"
"What are some words I can use to insult my TA?"
That being said, subjective questions are on topic if the request is expert-level, unique, particularly interesting and thought-provoking, shows substantial effort and research, and demands responses that meet the same standards. See: “Good Subjective, Bad Subjective – SE Blog”; “Real Questions Have Answers – SE Blog”.
So what is intended here is subject-matter experts asking other subject-matter experts high-level interesting questions that don't have easy answers.
@AllexKramer Like I said, I am totally for your 'logical' punctuation. If you quote something, you quote it as verbatim as possible including all punctuation and that goes inside the quote. But then your own sentence, which is doing the quoting, has its own punctuation and the two things, inside the quote and outside, are blind to each other.
@AllexKramer That I'm sure is off-topic. The things submitted must be question like. They can't be WIlliam Safire-like essays on a word you like. Sure, you could rearrange things to be question like and then answer the question yourself. That is allowed, and depending on the situation, very acceptable (depending of course). But it will be closed/etc if it's transparently an excuse to have a rant.
@MetaEd Thanks. That makes sense to me (and verbalizes thoughts I had). But I think in each case a case must be made. It's not always so obvious to people that lack of facts doesn't mean it's not knowable.
@Cerberus That's a good point. However, then, we run into consistency problems. If you have a direct speech quotation with multiple sentences, you end up with having to import punctuation, and with exclamation and question marks, you treat them with sense. If we treat words as just words that exist in some other realm once they fall into quotation marks, I think that's messier than logic.
@Cerberus That is, unless, however, you take quotation marks as an entity in itself that doesn't conform to the same logic that falls on the feet of the syntax around the inverted little devils.
The most logical system was pre-existing my message that mentioned the "you take quotation marks as an entity in itself", which established the system where words are just words. laughs
@AllexKramer Either you use the conventional systems, in which case you can capitalise the first letter of the quotation if necessary, even though it wasn't capitalised in the original; or you use the "most logical" system you suggested, in which case you get the ugly sentence in my quotation block above.
That means quotations and the sentence around it can go back and forth from being governed by the same rules. In some instances, you capitalize because it is the start of the sentence, even if it is a fragment, but in others, you do not, because its in the middle. Furthermore, if you move to punctuate the inner sentence because it appears at the ends, you are crossing lines, in the same way that you would be avoiding them if you didn't.
for example,
If you say the first letter has to be capital, even if it's in a quote, because it falls into the beginning of the sentence, that means the end-punctuation always must fall within the quote if the quote falls at the end of the sentence.
So, therefore, for my "most logical" system to work, I must consider quotations and all that is in them a separate entity.
@AllexKramer No, because the full stop can be moved outside the quotation marks, while the capital cannot: that's the difference.
We would move the capital outside the quotation if we could, but we cannot.
> [capital mark] "a green evening-gown" is what she said.
We don't have a capital mark.
@AllexKramer But doing that implies that you won't change anything inside the quotation, not even to avoid beginning the main sentence with a minuscle, doesn't it?
@Cerberus Might be pushing here, but if that's the case, then the quotations, no matter what, are considered to abide by the rules of the outer sentence no matter what. I am not discounting this.
So, with my logical system that I am developing, you believe I should make sure that capitalization always rules, but my punctuation rules can stand to be completely logical?
See, logically, in my mind, I believe the I want to go to ending has to be written as I did, because the punctuation on the inside is operating on a different level than that of the outside.
The only thing is that the main sentence itself could be said to be unfinished as well, which is why I wanted the dash in the main sentence and not in the quotation (for there couldn't be two dashes).
it has always bothered me that they are one of the few punctuation marks that are punctuated differently from the others, and I can't seem to find out why exactly with tug some marks and not others.
Bigotted viewpoints can be discussed by attributing them to the people who make these statements and not to the posters themselves and by putting their statements into an appropriate context. Example:
Question: The political doctrine of Antifelinism believes that all kittens should be eradica...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…