Belly Buttons and Punctuation

My colleague Diana Simon is my hero--my punctuation and grammar hero. Whenever I have a grammar or punctuation related question, she is the FIRST person that I go to (after Google of course).* In fact just last week I asked her if case law was one word or two. She replied that writing guru Bryan Garner prefers one word, but she and I agreed that we preferred two.

Diana publishes a column on writing and grammar in the Arizona Attorney magazine. Her latest column--Unlike Belly Buttons, Commas and Periods with Quotation Marks Cannot Be Innies or Outies--is a must read. It is a must read not just for its superb humor (a few examples of which I will provide below), but also because it addresses a pervasive problem in writing.  As Diana explains,

the increased placement of period and comma “outies” when quotation marks are used is out of control. Based purely on anecdotal evidence (well, I guess no evidence at all, then), I estimate that the placement of periods and commas outside quotation marks has increased by 165.56 percent.

And while Diana might claim that she has no evidence, she did acknowledge that she has seen an increased improper use of commas, periods, and quotation marks in her student papers. I agree.

So why is this a problem. Well, again Diana explains it well:

When you are a legal writing professor, seeing this trend [improper use of punctuation and quotation marks] can result in, among other things, loss of sleep, loss of hair (from pulling it out), and loss of nails (from biting them).

You might think I am being a tad overdramatic, but I can assure you the improper use of “outies” is a serious offense among legal writing professors. We lead very dull lives, so an issue such as the misplacement of punctuation with quotation marks can cause quite a stir. 

#truth.  I tell my students each semester that they are in America, and as such they MUST put periods and commas inside of quotation marks. If they don't like that rule, they can go become a barrister rather than a lawyer. Diana's article, in fact, tries to recount the history of why our punctuation conventions are historically different in America and why so many people seem to be forgetting those differences in everyday writing. Diana ends the article with the "rules for semicolons, colons, and question marks with quotation marks because there is a whole wide punctuation world that we live in beyond periods and commas, and we don’t want any other punctuation marks to feel left out."    

In short, read this article. Assign it to your students. Hopefully the belly button analogy will stick with them and improve punctuation usage.

*Diana is not, however, my citation hero. But that is a story for a different blog post.