April 30, 2008
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Punctuation
I have no idea where to put punctuation when it comes to quotation marks and parentheses. Two examples:
- “I sometimes get confused,” I told my friend, “about whether or not periods should come before or after the final quotation mark.”
- He nodded his head (as he did sometimes). <– “Should I have put that period before or after that parentheses?” he asked.
Are there any simple rules for this stuff?
Comments (156)
Nothing simple, no. Punctuation is sort of… the “groove” of your sentence, if you ask me, hehe. For dialogue though, I can tell you this:
“It works like this,” she said, “and when the sentence ends after the quotation, the period generally goes after”.
I think.
As for parentheses, it’s like this (this one I’m sure of).
All punctuation stays inside the quotes (like, “I want to play,” she said, “outside in the rain.”)
With parens, the punctuation goes outside.
I’ve often pondered that question myself haha…
I “have” that, (problem “too,”).
@nimbusthedragon - I think the period comes before the quotation mark? I have no freaking clue.
You did it correctly, John.
@JennyG - There is one exception, Jenny, with quotation marks, and that is with titles and such. (See HERE.) Also, not all punctuation goes outside of parentheses. It is only outside of the parentheses if the parentheses does not contain a full sentence. If it is a complete sentence, punctuation stays INSIDE. (See HERE.)
Sincerely,
Grammar-Punctuation Nazi
punctuation marks before quotations and periods after parenthesis.
Punctuation always inside quotes
i’m thinking the periods, commas, come before quote marks. i’m pretty sure. there are rules, but…you know. heh. it really gets confusing to me, though, when there’s a question mark at the end of the quote.
Your examples are perfect though. I keep reviewing what you wrote. I Googled a little because there aren’t any “simple” ways to remember the rules for this sort of thing.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_quote.html
http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/quotes.asp
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/marks/quotation.htm
The second one looks pretty cool for help. As for parentheses…
http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/parens.asp
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/parentheses.html
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_overvw.html
I hope that helps… I did find this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJli9bjv2YI
A whole new way to look at parentheses… and the only thing that makes me cry in the deli aisle is bologna.
John, people are gonna hate on me and I’m okay with that, but you’re getting a lot of BAD ADVICE here!!!
I definitely don’t know any simple rules when it comes to grammar but I do know that both of your examples have correct punctuation.
Punctuation always goes inside quotations marks. “John asked a question.” But it goes outside of parentheses, like this–(John asked a question). Except in the case of an entire sentence being it’s own. Like this: John asked a question. (I wonder why.) But everyone tried to answer it. The parentheses act as a kind of aside.
In any case, I’m always available for grammar consultation–just a message away!
I wish…. Punctuation sucks.. Period (at the end of the sentence, outside the parentheses
).
Think of it mathematically. With parentheses, if the “formula” inside the parentheses is a complete sentence, it get its own ending punctuation separate from that of the whole “equation.” Ergo…
I am an editor (isn’t that boring?).
I correct people for a living (loser).
With quotations marks it’s another whole ball game. Most of the time the punctuation stays inside the quotes. The only exception I can think of is the semicolon or colon. For example,
“It’s dark outside,” she said, “don’t you hate winter?”
This example isn’t all that “helpful”; I’m off-duty and my brain is on vacation.
@Fuego_de_Noche - Nice job! You make grammar look easy…
There are different rules for this depending on what part of the world you’re from. Americans place the period (or comma or question mark) BEFORE the quotation marks, whereas the Brits place the period AFTER.
Not sure about parenthesis. Sure you can look it up easily.
You should go back to elementary school. It seems you were busy playing handball and chasing girls around during recess. You didn’t think it would come back many years later to haunt you, did you? Now you must pay for your actions and face the consequences.
I wasn’t born here so I have an excuse for my poor grammar.
When in doubt, ask the authors here on Xanga.
You have a lot of us. But if you want a great website that will answer that question–or you can email her and get the answer–try Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips.
The answers are:
1. All punctuation will appear INSIDE the quotations.
2. You only put punctuation inside a parenthetical area if it’s a complete sentence (I am going to give you an example here.).
Both of your examples are correct. The rule for parentheses, as others have stated, is that if it’s a complete sentence, the period should go inside the parenthesis. Example: He nodded his head. (He did that sometimes.) A wonderful and entertaining guide to punctuation is the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss.
you got ‘em all correctly.
Inside the parentheses if the entire sentence is inside. (Here is an example.) Outside if the entire sentence is not inside the parentheses (such as here). You were correct. Glad my degree is good for something!
Just fyi, the rules are slightly different in the UK. Over there, a “full stop” (for us, a period) and other punctuation always goes outside the quotation marks. Also, I think that this makes more sense in some cases, for example when the sentence is a question ending with a quote, but the quote is not a question itself, as in, “Did he really say, ‘That monkey looks funny’?”
To me that looks really awkward, but I feel like it keeps the meaning of the sentence more clear, which should be the point of punctuation anyway, and I think it’s correct in the UK so if anybody ever gives me crap I can point to my English degree and act like a snob or something. Finally, this wasn’t in your question, but you’ll notice that there are two different kinds of quotation marks used in that sentence. Just like how in math you have both brackets and punctuation–e.x. 9[(7)x+y]–you have the double quotations and the single quotations. So if I’m quoting a quote (like I did above) the single quotes go inside the double quotes. “Jane asked, ‘how is that going to work?’”
Hope this is helpful, but even if it’s not, whatever–you’ve got tons of other comments coming your way anyway.
Thank you for the English lesson….
it’s easiest to think of it when u think of why u’re using it. most all punctuation goes inside of quotations unless you’re using a quote that is not a question within a question. like: she said, “this is an example.” and she asked, “did you see that example?” what does she mean when she had said “this is an example”? and as for parantheses, it’s just like others have said–punctuation as normal outside of the parantheses–within the aside, if it’s a sentence or question u can punctuation accordingly inside of them.
This whole post reminds me of seinfeld exclamation point!
punctuation goes before end of quotations and after the parentheses.
inside quotes.
outside everything else.
I always ask this question myself…
Both examples you provided are correct.
i jus skimmed through the responses and so far, everyone i’ve read is right so no explanation from me.
-ray leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
i’m confused about that, too! like when you’re quoting someone. someone wise once said “be happy”. or “be happy.” i always get confused.
The full stop goes after the brackets in that case, because brackets are a different sentence and the full stop is for the sentence before this. The full stop goes before the ” at the end of a sentence.
“La la la la.” = Yes
“La la la la”. = No uness “La la la,” said Jo.
I really like chocolate (yes I do). = Yes
I really like chocolate (yes I do.) = No. No need to punctuate short things in a bracket, get rid of brackets all together (not allowed to use them in formal writing)
Try:
I really like chocolate, yes I do.
-Heidi
you teach me a lesson!
I totally understand. I just say “screw it”.
Haha… you need to read one of my favorite books: “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” by Lynne Truss. It’s a pretty hilarious book about punctuation that only a nerd like me could find entertaining. Of course, I, myself, tend to screw around with punctuation all the time, like my incessant uses of ellipses……….
However, to address your 2 examples, they’re both punctually correct. Although, I might comment that the first example is quite an awkward sentence. The general rule is that you shouldn’t place the attribution at the beginning of a sentence, or break up a sentence with an attribution. It is usually recommended that attribution be used after the end of the first sentence.
In the second example, the general rule is that you should refrain from using parentheses if you could. But if you must, the period should always go on the outside, unless you have a full sentence within a set of parentheses. Then you can either use 2 periods for that sentence, or just use 1 period for the entire thing.
Haha, I haven’t read the other comments on this blog, but I’m sure we’ve provided you with a good recap of a 3rd grade class.
But you should definitely read that book! It’s a tickler…
hmm…why is this not showing up in my universal inbox?
Anyway…ha, I wrote an entry about this a couple months ago actually.
I think I’ve been taught punctuation goes inside quotes all the time, but as I ranted in my entry, I don’t think that makes sense in certain situations. The way I think it SHOULD be is if the punctuation goes with the actual quote, put it in the quotes, but if it’s not part of the quote and is just for the surrounding sentence, put it after.
*shrug*
You should read Eats Shoots and Leaves
I recommend Eats, Shoots and Leaves, great book.
I think that K-12 English teachers thought up this dilemma to mess us all up for. ev. er.
“All other punctuation are safe inside quotation marks.”
“Unless it is a comma,” she said.
Even if I learned that rule in school, I have now forgotten it.
Apostrophe’s kill me.
Oh grammar… grammar….. Someone once said to me. “If you’ve gotten your point across, no matter how it’s written out, you’re a genius!” =D
read eat shoots and leaves.
yes, i know the irony of not putting any punctuation in the title.
When you are quoting, the period comes before the last quotation mark. However, when you are citing, the period comes after the parenthesis:
example: She said, “I love you.”
example: “The sky is blah blah blah” (Julia, 23).
note: 23 is the page number.
There are two views about punctuation vis a vis positioning with quotation marks – either conventional or logical. The logical view says that if the punctuation is part of the quotation, then it goes inside the marks, otherwise outside. The conventional view says that punctuation goes within the quotation marks. It just depends how you were taught punctuation, there isn’t a golden rule.
In the bad old days when I did almost anything for money, I copy-edited PhD theses. I preferred logical punctuation but if the copy editor at the publishers preferred conventional, I would have to redo the whole thing.
I wrote to you a few mins ago about a script issue on the universalo private page that I was having. Here is another one, which may or may not be connected.
I am using GreenBrowser (built on IE) with the option to open links in a new tab open, tried to submit the comment above and got this page: http://weblog.xanga.com/signinverify.aspx?loggedOut=parent.showSignIn()%3b&loggedIn=parent.submitPageForm()%3b®istered=parent.submitPageForm(true)%3b&showsignin=True&rand=719913057&rand2=1040277.9776269692
I turned off the new tab option, and submitted the comment without any problem.
Just thought you might like to know.
I’ve thought about this many a times! Glad that I now know.
I just left a comment on your last post but the whole post got deleted by the time I hit submit.
I was going to say, that based on your alleged tastes, you would LOVE my current post
@eadie - I was just joking around and don’t care what people say about me (obv), but some people made references to my marriage and I didn’t feel that was fair to my wonderful wife.
I’ll def check your post out!
@john - wow, that was deffinitely over the line of them. I don’t blame you though, it always seems interesting to watch drama unfold on OTHER people
@eadie - Oh it’s fine and I don’t take it personally – I just have to draw some boundaries and for me that is one of them.
Sorry to read about your situation…
hope things resolve for the better!
@john - hahaha, you didn’t check it closely enough… my situation is JUST FINE
@eadie - Oh, I get it. But that doesn’t match my criteria at all! Haha…
@john - mwuahahahahahaha!
Microsoft Works is totally anal about grammar. I depend on it to know way more than I do.
It’s happening! The computers are taking over the wooooooorrrrld!!!!!
Someone needs a Strunk and White lesson! XD
Um, you did that all correctly so I don’t get the problem. You’re overthinking it, man!
I have trouble with the parenthesis when it comes to the word “but”. For example I have been told that in this instance:
I was posting on Xanga, but I died. The coma goes before the “but”. However, in this instance:
I was posting on Xanga but, to my surprise, I died The coma is SUPPOSED to go before AND after the “but”. However, you see, this makes no sense to me.
I guess it’s the difference between proper punctuation and punctuating the way you speak. Anyway, I think it’s dumb and always do it my way, much to the dismay of my marked up paper. >__<
Good luck on your punctuation endeavors.
@MissChristina - This is the best book ever.
I especially love the stickers provided to fix poorly punctuated signs! XD
…sadly, I’ve yet to use them… boo!
Rules? Pffffft! I make them up as I go.
@soNOTcool - LMAO You rock, J.
It actually depends which country you are in.
A programmer knows this:
string foo = “yay”;
The punctuation is ;, and it comes after the string literal because it’s not part of the string literal.
A grammarian knows this:
“Yes,” he said, “the punctuation occurs inside the quotes.”
The punctuation comes inside the quotes, because the quotes aren’t a string literal.
For parentheses, it’s very easy. Punctuate the sentence as if the parentheses were a string literal, unless the parenthetical is a sentence, in which case punctuate the parenthetical, but not the sentence.
Grammar is a pain (unless you know the rules).
Grammar is a pain (you know you shouldn’t speak ill of your elders.)
Also, when is anyone going to fix comment formatting?
To be sure, I always try to put a word after the final quotation mark. I’m pretty sure the rule says that punctuation marks always come before quotes, regardless.
@nimbusthedragon - Wrong, the punctuation ALWAYS goes inside of the quotes…Always and forever until the end of time. My English teacher made sure I wouldn’t forget that.
@HomerTheBrave - I was never sure about parenthetical punctuation. Thanks!
People are in love with you bro!
check out antisoccermoms new post! lol.
The punctuation goes INSIDE the quotes and OUTSIDE the parentheses.
All of these comments are just absurd Punctuation does not exist Its all a hoax just like the Holocaust
i always thought the . came before the ” and likewise about the ).
That was the hardest sentence I’ve ever had to type, without a doubt.
Putz
Now WHY is my profile pic being xangafucked
Conspiring again Johnny-boy???
I’m sure there are tonnes of punctuation mistakes in my post
)
but it would be great if your team can consider featuring my post heeeh.
http://weblog.xanga.com/miller0122/655534773/a-post-to-put-myself-at-ease.html
Ta.
I have two questions: (one) Will I get in seriouis doo-doo for using a myspace layout on Xanga?
(two) Can someone who’s been Featured on Featured Questions be featured on Featured Weblogs? Thanks,
Nick
Hey John, can you see if my post is front page material? It’s the last one I posted.
You have got them correctly in your examples. Punctuation inside quotes, outside parens.
The rule is that the period always goes just before the final quote mark, as you show it in your example.
okay… i came here to tell you to get the book “Eats Shoots & Leaves”. but then i saw your google ads and got distracted. (i just did a blog on google ads, i’m a little obsessive that way.)
in case you were wondering, as i’m sure you were, the top two google ads displayed on this page were “pregnant & need help?” and “your pretty mexican bride”. (then 3 more for internet utilities, but those are not nearly as fascinating.)
oh, and the period goes inside the paranthasees. (like ^^ that.) i think.
both sentances are prefect
RYC: awful is pretty accurate.
Americans generally put commas/periods are put before the ) and “.
The British incorporates a logical approach and puts commas/periods after the ) and “.
The solution is to just speak Esperanto instead.
Unrelated: I used to have premium – mostly for photo hosting, but have moved my pictures to a personal server instead. I deleted most of my pictures yesterda, but my storage limit hasn’t changed (it still shows that I have 0% available) when does this update?
from my understanding it all depends on where your parens start.
Hi how are you (but what i really meant was shut up and die).
(i wasn’t really thinking that, i’m just not that mean.)
woot.
Make up your own rules. Smile, Judi
Punctuation marks go inside the quoted text. “Like this.” Hehe. Not “Like this”.
the best. punctuation! is, no punctuation) at all?
i overuse parenthesis, quotes, semicolons and colons
There’s a great book–I used to make my English students buy it. It’s like cliff notes for grammar and punctuation. You can find it at any bookstore. It’s awesome.
This is completely unrelated to the question you posed, but I’m just wondering if Xanga has a blog archive? I keep looking at my modules but I can’t find anything with the word
“archive” in it. I don’t mean to compare Xanga to Blogger, but they have a really simple blog archive, which makes going back to previous posts a lot easier. Do we have something like that here at Xanga? If we don’t, it’d be nice to see one in the future.
@CrocodileGirl - try xanga.com/crocodilegirl/archives
Actually, scratch what I wrote earlier. I just noticed the Weblog Archives link under Posting Calendar. Anyway, it’d still be nice to have something simpler like Blogger. I love this community, just not the archive module so much.
@Natalia - Yes!! I just realized! Man, I feel dense. Haha.
In a recent version of the UK Apprentice one team spent three hours debating amongst themselves and telephoning back-and-forth between high-profile newspaper editors to work out whether how the concept of their card-product was spelt;
National Singles’ Day
or
National Single’s Day
Grammar is not allways too fun.
I leave the punctuation within the quotations… but I think it depends on where you’re from.
As for the brackets (parentheses), I aim for the cleaner looking version.
If you want to say something and it’s part of the sentence – fragment, then I’d leave the punctuation outside. (An example is already complete unknowingly by me above.)
As for the other one.. again, I completed an example by accident. If it’s a full sentence with a capital letter, subject and predicate, I’d leave the punctuation within.
= ]
It’s your call though. The way some people write, they call it creative license. Others call it ignorance. I just ignore them and choose what I feel like – my writing style.
= )
Did that help?
hey john just wondering if you think having support and enhancements on getsatisfaction.com/xanga is a good idea?
you can see whats been started when you have a chance. thanks!
Active customer service discussions in Xanga
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Service and support by Satisfaction
the punctuation in your post is correct. the parentheses always confused me for a while but then i kept seeing how it was done in books so i learned, LOL. ummm and yeah.. when it comes to mind in the gutter stuff, i always win. =] haha
What!? punctuations are at the end of a quote! Yeah I guess it depends how it’s written.
There are more important things in life than quotation marks and parenthesis!
Mouhahaha! Ask Xanga and get a gazillion answers!
Over here we use it like this: Once I saw a huge “cat”, (it was a lion actually).
Quotation marks always at the first and last letter in the quoted word or sentence. And this implies that if the quoted text includes a period mark, this too should stand inside of them. A _part_ of a text string quoted on the other hand, is usually shown with three period marks like this: “A beautiful day out at sea …”
Parentheses never end a sentence. That is the privilege of the period mark.
Sentences WITHIN the quotation marks and/or the parentheses is parted and buildt with punctuation marks as if the were ordinary sentences.
Simple rules? No. That’s what makes it fun.
I never had a great grammar background, but I think it’s just that I try to use good grammar, while a lot of people don’t think about it. Being online doesn’t help either.
I’m the worst, so I just do what I want and hope no picky xangan points out my mistakes.
thanks for raising up, i think we all get the clear answer! =)
Sorry to be off subject. Effort underway to get me to leave Xanga. I am asking everyone to vote with a comment on my last entry.
whats up
The final question mark goes after the quotation.
The period goes after the parentheses.
very very VERY simple. Puncuation is sooooooooo easy. Strangely enough, people seem to have a hard time with it.
100% of the time, commas, periods, etc. will be INSIDE the quotation marks.
99% of the time, QUESTION MARKS will be inside the quotation marks. Here’s an example of a time when a question mark will NOT be in the quotation marks:
Did john say, “I like to go to the store”?
The reason the question mark did not go inside the quotation marks is because the quotation -the words said- did not ask a question.
BUT, the sentence DID ask a question.
that is why you put the question mark outside of the quotation marks in that sentence.
It’s after the parathesis…I think =]
At least that’s how I was taught.
Anyway, maybe you could look up in a grammar book for the grammar rules…
@emberfly_layouts - Wow oh wow thanks for the punctuation/grammar lesson =]
hi john
i’m not clear on where to post this so…
i have two questions:
will
xanga ever use getsatisfaction to track support issues? it”s very
frustrating trying to get help. there’s no obivious place to get help
and it seems there is no place to see if the same problem has a
resolution.
the other thing i want to ask is: will xanga ever
support xmlrpc? i’m very close to moving to a more robust blogging
platform like wordpress simply because it’s more flexible and
extensible. i want to be able to post to my blog from external editors
and to have more control over my site. i’ve been blogging here since
2000 and i’m not the happiest camper with the projects that xanga has
chosen like xanga powered sites.
how about stuff that makes serious
bloggers more likely to use xanga?
in other words xanga is
quickly turning into the AOL of blogging systems. we start here but
once we get the hang of it we move on….i’d really like to help stop
that migration.
Hey john, I keep trying to check my comments on my site and when I do a pop up that loks like a pulse pop up, a little bigger, comes up and says something like stay connected adn then takes me to the sign in page and its an ugly cycle. I keep having to do that. CAn you help me and tell me why in the world that keeps happening.
Thank you. Oh and can you send it in a message, it takes me a million trys before I can actually get in my comments.Thanks!
Is way easy……………….. Just do…. this…………………
Hey, John, I posted a blog about The Top Ten Reasons I Xanga, you should check it out.
OMG OMG OMG! I love grammar posts!
I put the periods outside the parenthesis and quotes for aesthetics. I have no idea if it’s correct or not.
Why aren’t you writing any more?? are you busy? I hope you are, with improving xanga.
I realized that I write more on xanga than on my private journal.
So I was thinking, would it be too much to ask (it might be), if I suggest that xanga employs indexing technique for the xanga entries, just so that I can look up my entry real quick if I wanted to? Google desktop does it; Macs do it; now Windows do it too.
Hi! I just wanted to stop by and thank you for commenting on my post
You’re the best!
yesterday. I made featured content, thanks to your help! What an
awesome surprise this morning
Dear John,
Please go view my latest post. I have gotten amazing feedback in just the first hour on this one.
P.S
Maybe it’ll be better than the last ones I asked you to feature because it’s about how much I hate Myspace.
“I sometimes get confused,” I told my friend, “about whether or not
periods should come before or after the final quotation mark.”
My take: “I am confused”, said John, “about whether or not periods should come before or after the final quotation mark?”
John said, “Are there any simple rules for this stuff?” Or you can say this:”There are no simple rules for parenthesis (explainations) or where to put the quotation marks because the gramatical nazis are not sure of themselves either (after reading most of the comments, myself).
Fortunately the computer allows us easy quoting of other people but in some forums the quotes are often colored and highlighted to make them even more important to view as a quotation. Thus if you have a blog here on xanga we often blur the lines of what was quoted and will make disasterous mistakes that will basically change the context of what we quoted in the first place.
Thanks for visiting, John!
@saintvi - I was so hoping that someone was going to mention Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. You are a star and the book is amazing.
we should just create our own punctuation rules…
check out my blog about encouraging everyone to be TRUE xanga members! yes a bit of shameless self promotion… but I want to be featured!
Grammar! Agh! LoL.
It’s only confusing when you think on it too long…
This is why writers employ editors, one shouldn’t get too bogged down in the type of canvas, nor the paint brush
i f0und somethin to help you: lilt.ilstu.edu/golson/punctuation/intro.html
Honestly, this is exactly why I blog. So I don’t have to worry about sentence structure, punctuation, and all that is grammatically “correct.” I’ve done my best to forget those torturous years spent learning Language Arts that unfortunately, I now have to teach to my kiddos. I have horrific memories of the content of your weblog today in addition to the seemingly meaningless diagramming of sentences with noun, pronoun, proper noun, common noun, adjective, direct object, preposition, prepositional phrase, linking verb, adverb, helping verb, etc. Yuck! Of course we learn later on in life it isn’t meaningless, it all pertains to the process of thought and effective communication. I just have to say, however, I always questioned the rules of grammar and punctuation because not everyone is iterating (is that a word?) by the rules of Language Arts. Some of us communicate differently and mean to do so, intentionally breaking the rules. I don’t know, it’s all about diversity to me. If you understand what someone means by what they say and what they right, whoopy ding. But then, when I put my teacher hat on, only one way is correct because someone so many years ago deemed that it would be so. The real question is why do certain punctuation marks go before and after commas and quotation marks? And just how did they come to agree on it? You see, you’ve opened up Pandora’s box of questions for me with this topic and it has now taken on an entirely different meaning than what you intended it for. LOL!
Back on topic, for the reason of question, when I post conversations, I always put the convo in another color than the text in my weblogs. What I said appears in one color and what the other person said appears in another conversation. Any feelings or expression appear in brackets and parenthesis outside in yet a different color of text. [grins] I did that today in fact with an unpleasant experience I had yesterday in conversation. It’s more effective for me and helps me to remember the rules of grammar and punctuation myself. [winks]
Hey John,
What do you know of this net neutrality issue? Is it even an issue?
hello
Great recommendation on impossibleangle’s “The Real Reason I Have a Daughter”.
I have a little issue with the new private page. see it had it before that you could look at all of your weblogs entry in the private page and just going through them. Now it sends me to my xanga site when i want to see all of my weblogs. I don’t know if it was changed to this or if somehow I ended up having the special version or something but I would rather not have to go to my xanga site to find a single weblog cuz the site takes a little bit to load each time. So can we just see all of our weblogs easily in our private page again? (kinda like dash)
@Karu_Black - you can change your homepage setting at any time by going to http://www.xanga.com/private/editaccount.aspx – the option for dash or the classic private home is open to you!
ryc: Have you seen how many serial killer fetish sites there are out there on the internet, though? It’s crazy!
@Drakonskyr - ok u convinced me. will u be our first serial killer/blogger?
u only have to kill one person a year… i figure u can blog about the planning for six months, then the kill will be one month, then u’ll have to dispose of the body/change alias… that would probably be a few months?
@john - I’m all over it! With xanga’s change name feature, the cops will never find me!
@Drakonskyr - sounds like a plan! i will send over a list of xangans that it’s ok to kill. all of them are classic users, so i don’t mind.
@john - Please, dear god, let me kill some of the people who whined about not being True.
With parenthesis, you put all punctuation on the inside (like this.) Same with quotes.
@Drakonskyr – what is the theory… that killing them will stop the whining?
@john - Please don’t have me on that list! Please! I’m too young to die!
this is why i can’t teach english to little asian kids because i can’t explain why its like that… IT JUST IS
I highly recommend “The Elements of Style” by Strunk & White.
I also find it kind of funny that I came here to ask you a grammatical question about Xanga and here you’ve already gone and blogged about grammar.
My question is this: can you fix the bad grammar on the notifications that “Username added a album.” I don’t know about anyone else, but it makes me cringe.
ryc: I am sorry. Should I go back and edit?
Did you mention that because I made you mad?
Haha a hatchet is just an ax with a short handle!
Phew. Thought I was dead there for a sec.
i miss you and i hope you call
Definitely not simple, but once you get the hang of it–it becomes second nature.
haha, there are so many rules, It really is impossible to remember them all!
house is a fun show!
p.s. HOW IS HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL?
. before ”
&
. after )
atleast i’m pretty sure…since that’s how it’s done in MLA
(& wow…i’m a loser).
i say, always have a portable expert on grammar with you at all times. luckily for me, i’m very good with grammar and punctuation, but i could see how beneficial it would be to carry a small expert with you in your pocket. like a tiny college english professor.
oh yeah, they don’t make those… nevermind…
hmmm…. i followed you here through your comments on dare2bdifferent’s post because i wanted to see the man with not just one but 2 hatchets. turns out i already commented this post. ah well.
so what is up with this “tremen” and why do you keep recommending him?
@eadie - Do you read my pulse? Those posts are all written by me.
@john - ahaha, I figured somebody behind the xanga team was responsible for that, hm, I guess I missed that pulse, I usually catch them all
Regarding your new post: Awesome. I’d have to agree.
Dear man-who-runs-xanga-whom-I-have-great-respect-for:
Please seriously consider featuring my latest post. It’s the first of it’s kind. Except the other ones like it. Kind of.