Are you in favor of "logical punctuation"?

I can never remember whether commas go in or out of brackets – if it’s an important communication, I have to look it up every time. So, I can’t fairly say that I care who wins that debate. ;)

When I saw your question, I thought you were going to talk about putting commas in places where you would stop to take a breath when speaking. I hate that.

There are a number of British conventions I prefer to American ones. This is one, and starting with single quotes and using double quotes for quotes within quotes is another. I use the American conventions out of habit, but I’ve seriously considered retraining myself a few times.

I am in favor of following the established rules of grammar.

Good lord, yes. I hope that all the style guides will follow my lead. Yes, I know this is a somewhat lofty goal.

@marinelife But which rules? There are conflicting conventions in this case. It’s not as easy as appealing to authority.

Not that grammar should be a prescriptive project in the first place.

@submariner I thought this was the way it was always supposed to be done anyway?

@downtide Not if you live in America.

Here’s a quick comparison of US and UK conventions . I had thought that the US and UK followed the same rules for the comma, but it seems I was wrong, or that it has changed.

Very much so. Especially when it comes to punctuation and parentheses. I want the end punctuation to be outside, please!

Note: this is mostly because I like things to look symmetrical-ish, and…
(this doesn’t look that way to me.)
(This looks better).

^If the capital is inside, then the end punctuation should be inside too. With parentheses, I think it depends on what the parenthetical item is parenthetical to (i.e., the sentence or the paragraph). (See what I mean?)

What I have real trouble with is ending a sentence in quotation marks, then immediately ending the original sentence with the same punctuation. It always looks wrong to me. Example:

Shouldn’t it be easier to punctuate a sentence about Jim’s question, “What do you mean, quotation marks drive you crazy?”?

Normally, I rearrange sentences to avoid the situation altogether, because it feels wrong to put only one question mark, and if only one is required, it feels wrong to drop either one.

@dappled_leaves I don’t think it is standard usage anywhere to double the terminal punctuation. While UK usage allows (but does not encourage) things like

She asked, “Where is my cup?”.

my understanding is that it wouldn’t allow something like

Did she ask, “Where is my cup?”?

That’s part of the point when it comes to these “inside or outside” rules, after all, since otherwise we’d be using double periods and such.

^According to the link posted above, the UK conventions allow but do not require doubling end punctuation, including [?].

Oh, look at that. It does. My mistake. Still, it is merely considered acceptable, so it’s not like @dappled_leaves should feel pressured to use double question marks.