I am going to hold your hand while I say this: We should all care less about grammar and spelling.
To be clear, this is not an anti-intellectual take. I am not calling for complete and total grammatical anarchy. We as a society still need to use the proper form of “they’re/their/there,” as they have separate linguistic functions. “Apart” and “a part” cannot be used interchangeably because their meanings are polar opposites. I am a huge proponent of the Oxford comma. I would never want to “eat grandma.” BUT, I will stand 10 toes down, a sniper laser aimed at my temple, to unflinchingly proclaim that quotation marks do not always need to be outside of the punctuation because sometimes it does not make sense.
Placing punctuation inside of quotation marks does make sense in some situations. For example, sentences like: “Phillip asked, ‘Do you need this book?’” The question mark pertains to the information inside of the quotation mark. This makes total sense and is a type of sentence I celebrate. However, imagine you’re saying a sentence like: “He said his favorite animals were cows, pigs, and “some kind of freak rodent.”’ I do not celebrate this type of sentence. “Some kind of freak rodent” is only part of the man in question’s favorite animals. Because the period relates to the whole sentence, the period should go outside of the punctuation rather than trapping it inside the quotation marks with said “freak rodent.” I understand this situation does not happen often, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth fighting for.
When I bring this up in casual conversation (an unfortunately routine occurrence at parties, functions, and intimate gatherings to ensure a robust and diverse sampling). I am always met with the same two arguments. 1) “Quotation marks are formatted this way to save room on the page.” Angels, the book is 500 pages long. I don’t think the logical placement of quotation marks will make that much of a difference in terms of length or readership.
The second type of pushback I get against quotational justice is simply, “It was beaten into me by my teachers.” That’s fine. Teachers taught me Pluto was a planet. Who cares? The point of education is to teach us how to reason, how to come to logical conclusions. Using a hard and fast rule for quotation marks, rather than teaching students to place them in a way that situationally makes sense, doesn’t do us any favors. Learning rules for the sake of learning rules is not learning, it’s memorizing.
“So,” you say, “if we give you that one grammatical amendment you will be appeased?” No. I would like to spew hate towards a few more grammatical rules, thank you.
“No stranded prepositions.” I’m sorry, but “of” is fine at the end of a sentence, and if she’s not it’s probably good character growth for her. To call that a “stranded preposition,” is sinister work. She’s not stranded. She’s right there. She’s in the vehicle of the sentence. Now, if the sentence was just “Of.” then she would be stranded. But in the context of a sentence like, “That was the only thing I thought of.” it’s like… “Of,” girl, you are in the sentence. You made the friends. You’re in the group chat. Stop calling yourself stranded! It’s making everyone uncomfortable. Being a sad sack is not the way to get invited to be in more sentences.
“I before E except after C, unless sounding like ‘A’ as in ‘neighbor’ and weigh.” I am not a peasant trying to pass a troll. Do not present me with a riddle. Here’s a thought: Spell receive like “receeve” and weigh like “waay.” The Dutch double up on vowels all the time and they’re literally fine. Better even!
