English 115 Woes (Mark II)

[fuzzyoctopus]

see, i think you're wrong with that too. I had punctuation drilled into me.

My English teacher freshman year of high school made us all repeat, over and over, "Commas and periods always go inside the ending quotation marks."

Which has been helpful for me to know. Except when they don't.  Stupid British with their stupid backwards punctuation.

[House of Mustard]

I have that specific problem all the time, because parentheses are supposed to go inside the period and quotation marks outside (I think).  I always get that messed up.  Thank goodness for editors.

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

Yeah, and editable posts. I usually kick myself around when i get punctuations wrong. And even when I'm typing something I'll go back in the middle of finishing the line and edit it because I either spelled something wrong or placed something incorrectly.

[stacer]

I have that specific problem all the time, because parentheses are supposed to go inside the period and quotation marks outside (I think).  I always get that messed up.  Thank goodness for editors.

Actually, for parentheses it varies, depending on whether you have a complete sentence inside them. If it's a word or a phrase within them and they're being used in a sentence (like this), then punctuation goes outside. (However, if it's a complete sentence, you put the period at the end of the sentence.)

[House of Mustard]

See?  How do they expect us to remember this stuff?

[EUOL]

And, in both APA and MLA, the punctuation goes outside the quotation marks when you're citing a source at the end of a sentence.

However, we were expressly told NOT to spent a lot of time on grammar.  We grade for it because the school expects us to, but current research shows that grammar instruction does NOTHING to improve students' ability to use grammar.  They have to see examples in their own writing, and try to change it themselves.