How should a list of questions be presented?

Each question represent a complete sentence. A question mark is placed at the end of a sentence similar to a period being placed at the end of a sentence. No commas are used at the end of a sentence. Do not use commas.

Lists of quoted sentences:

The survey asks three questions: "What did you receive last Christmas?", "What is your favorite country and why?" and "What did you do last vacation break?".

When I saw my cousin drunk, I asked myself three questions: "Where did he get the money to buy alcohol?", "Where are his shoes?" and "What will his mother say when she finds out?".

Here I use "logical placement" of punctuation when quoting: punctuation is placed inside the quotes if it belongs with the quoted material or outside the quotes if it is part of the surrounding material (such as the commas that separate items in a list).

Also, I do not use a comma after the penultimate item and before the co-ordinating conjunction in a list (eggs, bacon, ham and toast). That comma, when present, is called the "Oxford comma" or "Harvard comma" and some style guides require it; some don't. It is more common in US styles.

These practices are common in British English, although you can find British style guides that advise against them.

In American practice, punctuation may be seen inside the quotes as a matter of course, whether it "logically" belongs there or not.

Many, if not most people within the U.S., long-time advocates of "standard punctuation", put commas and periods within quotation marks even when they’re not part of the quoted material.

Standard:
Some may wonder why logical punctuation is called “logical.”

Logical:
Some may wonder why logical punctuation is called “logical".

Your penchant for disparaging American usage, just because i tis not the usage with which you are familiar reminds me of Glennnnn and his attack on British usage in the expression "turn into the road." He also claimed his argument was based on logic.

People who live in glass houses . . .

I don't believe I've ever seen the 'standard' usage you're referring to.

No exaggeration; the quoted material or the material being emphasized (even if wrongly) goes in the quotation marks. The only punctuation that goes inside quotation marks is either whatever is appropriate to the sentence (e. g. "Yankees suck!") or is used as dialog tags (e. g. "I love pie," she said.).

There are people who don't know how to spell or add punctuation, but those people aren't to be pointed at as exemplars of usage, in the United States or anywhere else.

I think you mistake me, Setanta. I was not disparaging US conventions, merely pointing out that they are sometimes different from British ones. This can lead to confusion for learners, especially if they are not aware of the fact that American and British English have differences. Generally I try to present (at least I thought I did) a balance view, because, although many people assert that "American English does this, and British English does that", the truth is usually that certain usages or practices are majority in one zone, and minority in the other, or even 50/50 in both.

In order that I can avoid offending anyone in the future, I would be grateful if you could show me the place or places in my post where I appeared to be disparaging anyone.

"In the US, the standard style is called American style, typesetters' rules, printers' rules, typographical usage, or traditional punctuation, whereby commas and periods are almost always placed inside closing quotation marks. This style of punctuation is common in the US and Canada, and is mandated by the Chicago Manual of Style and other American style guides. The other standard style - called British style or logical punctuation - is to include within quotation marks only those punctuation marks that appeared in the quoted material, but otherwise to place punctuation outside the closing quotation marks. Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage provides a good example of the British-style rule: "All signs of punctuation used with words in quotation marks must be placed according to the sense."

An article here is as good as any:

http://www.lowendmac.com/misc/11mr/logical-punctuation.html

That's interesting, thanks.

CMOS Online actually disagrees with that, see - http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Punctuation.html and go to:



You need to click on the answer in order to get it to open up; it's around seven questions down.

That CMOS reply actually confirms what I said (doesn't it?) (Put simply- American: period/comma always inside quotes, British: period/comma according to sense)

When you refer to the "standard" form and the "logical" form, the implication is that the American usage is illogical. It's not illogical, nor is your customary usage logical--they're just different. This is exactly the p0int i made to Glennnnn when he was going on and one about logic in his rant about "into the road." The usages are just different, nothing more.

Ah, I see where you are coming from. Believe me, I did not choose the word 'logical' myself in order to sneer. It is the word used for that style by many style guides, grammar writers, etc, very many of them American. I feel that the interpretation of 'logical' as pejorative to Americans is stretching things more than a bit, therefore. It's a technical term.

An article titled "Logical Punctuation" by Jocelyn Blore from San Francisco on Grammarly:

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/logical-punctuation-infographic/

The Rise of "Logical Punctuation" by Ben Yagoda (a professor of journalism and English at the University of Delaware) on Slate.com:

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2011/05/the_rise_of_logical_punctuation.html

"'Logical Punctuation' vs. Traditional Rules of Style" by Charles Moore (Canadian) on the Lowendmac blog:

http://www.lowendmac.com/misc/11mr/logical-punctuation.html

The word is presented bare with no quotes in this Wikipedia style discussion page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Logical_quotation_on_Wikipedia

I am always amused by people who refer to "prescriptivist." I can only assume that they have embraced cognitive dissonance. If you call someone a prescriptivist, one is in fact being prescriptivist oneself, in that one is preferring one linguistic method or artifact over another. One of the most glaring examples is when soi-disant descriptivists admonish people that it is bad form to criticize double negatives, because a "significant language community" uses double negatives (to use the actual language of a linguistic ranter we had here for a while). Yet telling "a significant language community" that they cannot condemn double negatives is itself a prescriptvist position. I would always advise an English language learner not to use double negatives, it the subject came up, because they will be judged by how they speak, and not the political stance of self-appointed linguistic purists. (The terms i am using are all to be found online in discussions of prescriptivism--prescriptivism was brought up by your source at, i believe it was, the University of Delaware.

I accept that your intent was not to present a pejorative description of American punctuation styles. One of my guiding principles here in advising English language learners, it to give them useful advice. If one knows which style of English the student is learning (for example, Tanguatlay is learning British usage), one should help them to understand the usage they will be taught. Absent that kind of information, one should advise the student which usage you are referring to, or present both usages, if one knows them.

I hate to scan my million posts here on a2k, some of which are illogical in their own odd ways, some are funning, some have typos on parade, some have too many damned commas and some not enough (I tend to post fast), but I think I, american, do not put the period in with the quote unless the quote has it in the first place. Not sure how that makes me come out in the wash re this matter on quoting.

I still don't think so (I'm not trying to be difficult here).

Perhaps I am tired and reading it wrong.

However - for American English -

"I like him," she said. <<-- dialog tag.

"She said, 'I like him', and we all heard her," he said. <<-- dialog tag plus the second comma is for sense and a short pause. The third is another dialog tag. In this example, the commas are where they make the most sense but we also follow the rule of a dialog tag.

"He's an idiot!" she yelled. <<-- exclamation point refers to the quote and is a part of it.

Actually, this is a great question for Roberta.

I asked her already, she declined.

I am busy laughing with hope for a Roberta view point.

Roberta talks normal on a2k, since she is.

She spent a lot of years as a senior editor/word person at top company.. If you disagree with her, I might have to kill you. Probably by flinging prunes.

Anyhow, she isn't usually pedantic.

After 1066, English was viewed as a peasant's language and with contempt. However, the third King Edward, displaying just one aspect of his genius for leadership, spoke English to his archers and men at arms, and in fact, usually spoke English in public. When he invaded France in 1346, he displayed the green dragon banner of Wessex along with his own arms quartered with the fleur-de-lis, the symbol of France. All these were powerful propaganda statements. But Edward insisted that the nobility speak English, too, at least when in the presence of the army. He was one of those leaders for whom his soldiers would gladly die. For English, it meant the rescue of the language from obscurity and contempt.

Sadly, in the late 14th century, and in the 15th and 16th centuries, English-speaking scholars tried to shoehorn English into Latin grammar. Hilariously, the earliest English grammars are written in Latin. It didn't take, though, and that great innovator Shakespeare gave it a death blow, by combining a little French with English as it was spoken.

The next great bodily assault on English was the attempt in the 18th century to make it logical. The objection to double negatives dates to that period--even though, ironically, double negatives are not only used in French, but required. About all it accomplished was to make for a class-conscious use of English. People accustomed to double negatives and saying "nowt" rather than nought spoke as they always had, but were now branded uneducated bumpkins. In that same era, the use of the second person singular died out among the well-educated.

Noah Webster was the only reformer of whom i know who had a long-lasting and wide effect. The English still write centre and colour, and disparage Webster's reforms--but they no longer write magick and tragick, but rather, they write magic and tragic, just like we poor benighted Americans. Others have tried, and signally failed, the most well-known being Theodore Roosevelt. who, as Grover Cleveland's Civil Service Commissioner, attempted to introduce "logical" spelling--and was completely ignored. It was probably good that he got it out of his system before he became President.

Linguistics, and English in particular, is currently in the clutches of politicized linguistic concepts, which is where that presciptivist/descriptivist BS comes from. I was not aware that they had imposed this "standard" and "logical" nonsense on us, but i'm not surprised. I am consoled by the words of Attar of Nishapur: "This, too, shall pass."

While I have sympathy for your position regarding "political BS", I cannot help feeling that your most recent posts are a little off-topic for this thread. The styles labelled "logical" and "standard" are just typesetter's conventions really. They exist, they are widespread, and to some extent they are localised. It is natural that they are called something, and also natural that the names reflect their natures. You could call them "PI" (Punctuation Inside) and "PO" (Punctuation Outside), I suppose, or "Style A" and "Style B".

Someone made the decision that one style is "logical," which implies that the other is not. I seriously doubt that it would be reasonable to attribute that to typesetting compositors. Since the replacement of linotype by offset lithography and computerized typesetting more than 40 years ago, compositors have ceased to exist as a profession.

Ah, now the problem is revealed. You are taking the meaning of 'logical' to be other than meaning [1] of these:

[1] Of or according to the rules of logic or formal argument

[1.1] Characterized by or capable of clear, sound reasoning

[1.2] (Of an action, decision, etc.) expected or sensible under the circumstances

The 'logical' scheme is thus named because it follows [some sort of] logic, [a logic in fact] that is, a scheme by which one can determine where the punctuation should be placed. It is not thus named because it is the opposite of 'foolish'. There is no element of judgement.

This reminds me of the feeling I had when I first encountered 'natural account codes' in financial accounting. Most organizations set up an account coding structure in which multiple divisions, departments, or companies share the same main account. The natural code is the most fundamental element of the account code structure. This element represents the primary purpose of the account (e.g., Sales or Telephone Expense). Examples:

61110 Consumables
61210 Stationery
61220 Photocopying & Duplicating
61310 Photographs, Videos, Slides
62110 Postage
62210 Couriers
63110 Telecommunication Expenses
64110 Office Furniture
64210 Office Equipment
76110 Equipment Purchases
76120 Computer Equipment
76130 Computer Software & Licences
76140 Motor Vehicles
76310 Equipment Hire & Rental

I saw the word 'natural' as meaning "Existing in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind", or "praiseworthily appropriate" whereas the derivation is from "reflecting the nature of the thing".