IEEE citation style necessitates the use of American punctuation rules, e.g., UsersGuide.Conventions.UsersGuide.References

[gwr69]

I just note that the examples given in UsersGuide.Conventions.UsersGuide.References use British punctuation conventions—not the appropriate American ones, i.e., the quotation marks should be placed after the comma and not before it (cf. Wikipedia: Quotation marks in English).

Please also see this example for the proper use of punctation in the IEEE Transactions citation style: https://pitt.libguides.com/citationhelp/ieee

[tobolar]

New to me, thanks. 'The title of the song was "Gloria," which many already knew.' has really a weird syntax to me. ;-)

[gwr69]

New to me, thanks. 'The title of the song was "Gloria," which many already knew.' has really a weird syntax to me. ;-)

Indeed. :)

With an ever increasing number of English language users, but less and less native speakers among them, the idiosyncrasies of British vs. American English may forever be lost—or will happily be mixed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_American_and_British_English

American English? No such thing! (according to Oxford professors of English)

[HansOlsson]

Well, we cannot use that style consistently for all quotes - since parts are documentation where the logical style is preferable.

I tried to look at it and got to the first example Modelica.Blocks.Examples.PID_Controller

The output of the controller is a torque that drives a motor inertia "inertia1".

Thus for consistency reasons I would propose to not say that we use IEEE style.

[henrikt-ma]

The output of the controller is a torque that drives a motor inertia "inertia1".

Thus for consistency reasons I would propose to not say that we use IEEE style.

I agree. To me, the IEEE style, “like this,” is an unreasonable tradeoff between typography hysteria and preservation of grammatical structure. It was probably more important in the old days of monospaced typewriter text, when it was impossible to snug the comma tightly after a narrow character for the quotation mark, but even back then I can see why the habit wasn't adopted universally.

[gwr69]

Why should following a citation style necessitate that its use of punctuation needs to transcend to all other uses, e.g., in documentation? Personally, to me as a German, the American use of quotation marks is rather in line with that of my mother tongue, and since I spell like an American most of the time (e.g., oganization, color, humor, center, elevator instead of lift etc.), why not punctuate like most of them do as well?

If you are dropping the explicit mentioning of the IEEE Transactions citation style, I do not find that very consistent. :)

CORRECTION: Obviously, I have fallen victim to mixing German and (American) English to come up with "Denglish". The correct use of German quotation marks and punctuation is in many aspects closer to the British usage. :)

[gwr69]

@henrikt-ma writes:

I agree. To me, the IEEE style, “like this,” is an unreasonable tradeoff between typography hysteria and preservation of grammatical structure. It was probably more important in the old days of monospaced typewriter text, when it was impossible to snug the comma tightly after a narrow character for the quotation mark, but even back then I can see why the habit wasn't adopted universally.

As is so often the case, people frame something as "logical" to make convincing others about a personal choice, which essentially boils down to aesthetics and stylistic preferences, an easier task. Thankfully, such sophistry can be unmasked rather easily and I will cite the British (!) Guardian on this:

'The British style'? 'The American way?' They are not so different—by David Marsh

Subtitle: "There's nothing especially logical about 'logical punctuation' – and you can quote me on that"

To quote and annotate from the article:

Indeed, the very sight of that full stop outside the quote makes me shudder. (Note: Me too.)

The debate about "logical punctuation" suggests two things. First, there is nothing very logical about it. As with so many aspects of language, what you use tends to be the result of a battle between what you were taught, and what you like the look of. Second, British and American English have more in common than people sometimes think. And you can quote me on that.

EDIT: Some people also try to convince me to "abandon LaTeX" as nowadays Word and other text editors are just equally good–rendering LaTeX an unnecessary dinosaur. Need I say more? ;-)

[henrikt-ma]

As is so often the case, people frame something as "logical" to make convincing others about a personal choice, which essentially boils down to aesthetics and stylistic preferences, an easier task.

In the humanities, I can see this boiling down to aesthetics and stylistic preferences. However, in our community I believe there are many of us who work closer to parsers, expression trees, and pretty-printers. In this context, a serialized form where the order doesn't correspond to a traversal of the expression tree is not “logical”.

[gwr69]

As is so often the case, people frame something as "logical" to make convincing others about a personal choice, which essentially boils down to aesthetics and stylistic preferences, an easier task.

In the humanities, I can see this boiling down to aesthetics and stylistic preferences. However, in our community I believe there are many of us who work closer to parsers, expression trees, and pretty-printers. In this context, a serialized form where the order doesn't correspond to a traversal of the expression tree is not “logical”.

You mistake constructed programming languages with spoken—and (eventually)written—natural languages used by humans. Evolved and spoken language is different from (supposedly strict) mathematical logic.

https://english.stackexchange.com/a/5498/168079

Something I find interesting is the marked tendency of programmers to place punctuation outside quotations and parentheses due to a familiarity with the programming convention of "nesting" punctuation.

The different takes on this matter by many style guides (British or American) clearly show that natural language is everything but a strictly logical programming exercise. :)

[gwr69]

Well, we cannot use that style consistently for all quotes - since parts are documentation where the logical style is preferable.

I tried to look at it and got to the first example Modelica.Blocks.Examples.PID_Controller

The output of the controller is a torque that drives a motor inertia "inertia1".

Thus for consistency reasons I would propose to not say that we use IEEE style.

@HansOlsson I would agree for your example and in this case even American or typographical punctuation would allow for the above use.

But let's take a step back: You mention consistency and with that aim in mind I would suggest that you compare the Modelica Specification (HTML-version) with the documentation for the MSL (which is in itself not consistent in the use of typography as far as I can see). Also have a look at the current web documentations for MATLAB, Maple, Wolfram Mathematica, GitHub, Microsoft .NET and other technical systems. Please tell me, how many quotation marks you will find in these documents, which will have comparable tasks and challenges as the MSL documentation?

There is almost no use of quotation marks in modern technical documentations on the web! The reason for this is that when text is separated from surrounding text by its styling (e.g., color, italics, non proportional fonts), quotation marks are not needed (neither in the UK nor the US)! It seems that the MSL documentation stems from a time, where the "common denominator" for computer text output in a browser was indeed Henrik's "monospaced typewriter text."

Why should the documentation for the MSL look different from the Modelica Specification or modern technical documentation?