Fairy Tale, Pt. 29
on February 7, 2011
at 00:00
I got most of the way done with today’s comic and then realized it was next week’s comic. Quickly threw this one together. At least, next week’s stands a chance of getting posted on time.
(Apparently threw it together a bit too quickly. Typo fixed.)
OBLIGITORY SNOBBERY: I’m not exactly sure what a comma is doing after the ellipsis in panel 4, but it should be somewhere else. Of course, it could have escaped from anywhere, but I don’t think we’ll ever find where it came from. I mean, there’s just so many sentences out there, right?
Also, “Thanks god you found your horse”? Surely it should be “Thank you you found your horse”.
(also, before you ask, I believe that, if the punctuation next to a quote doesn’t belong in it, it shouldn’t be in there. I don’t care if it’s wrong – it makes more sense that way!)
Also, now we know the gender of the horse. This is truly a historic moment that will last the ages (or two seconds who knows).
I just realised that there’s three ‘also’s in my last post. I need a new transition. D:
As far as I know, the comma at the end of an ellipsis is OK (I could be wrong), but the “thanks god” should have been a “thank god” (back to the editor for fixage). This is what I get for rushing things and leaving the comma cage open.
As for punctuation and quotes, the punctuation should be inside the quote if it matches (e.g., your example should have been: “Thank you. You found your horse.” (other punctuation inserted as your original example didn’t scan.)) But your first quote with the question mark outside is indeed correct.
Proofreading your own writing is like testing your own code.
Well, I’m one of those people who like to choose the way that makes sense. In my example, the period was outside the quotation marks since, if the first quote was blindly replaced with the new quote, the replaced text would have read… wait, I put “Thank you”, when I meant “Thank god”. Oh derpity. Anyway, it would have read “Thank god you found your horse..”, which is obviously not what I want. Also, IIRC, at the end of the second/third sentence (depending on whether you divide sentences at ellipses), I would have had to put the period in the “Thank god” quote, where it obviously shouldn’t be.
Buuuuut then again, since when was grammar perfectly logical?
(this is when you answer never!)
Also, as for the ellipsis-comma thing, that just seems kinda silly, don’t you think? It would be less silly if they indicated a constant-length pause, but since it varies per use and person, there really is no point into adding the comma.
And now I’m thinking grammar should be more like Python or Ruby syntax. This isn’t a good sign, is it?