The difference between
In the six months (!!) since I moved back to the U.S. from seven years north of the border in (what i consider to be) my hometown of Toronto, Ontario…this scenario has happened several times:
“Soooo…how do you like being back in America?”
“Um, it’s good - great. Yeah, I like it.”
“Does it feel weird?”
“Nope, not really…I mean, ya know…I did live here for a long time before living in Toronto…”
“Right, right, but…aren’t there, like - well…okay, what’s the BIGGEST difference between living in Canada and living in the U.S.A.?”
Sigh. Up until now I’ve not really had a good answer. I mean, besides the processed vs. american cheese, no french on my Cap’n Crunch box, a lack of frigidly cold winters (but that’s more a Toronto vs. L.A. thing…), eh vs. huh, washroom vs. restroom (”You’re going to the laundry room? What?”), rainbow money vs. the green stuff, and oreos being back in bags instead of boxes…I’m comin’ up empty.
Until now. Now, whenever someone asks me that question, my answer is gonna be about why this is just fine and dandy in the U.S., but completely incorrect everywhere else in the world.
Jane went to the store to get some fish and marshmallows for the lady who liked to think she was her “mother.”
If you don’t see what I’m talking about, don’t worry (or do - you might want to stop reading right here because I’m a bit of a grammar freak which means this is likely gonna mean a lot more to me…kinda sad, but true). It’ll become clear as we go along.
While editing a document (which shall remain nameless…shhhh), I came across this setup time and time again. Not fish and marshmallows, not pretend mothers, and no person name Jane. What I kept seeing was this equation — quotation mark, text, period, end quotation mark. As the sirens would be going off in my head (”end quotation mark THEN period…end quotation mark THEN period!!”), my smarty pants husband pointed out that he’s been seeing that all over the place. In formal documents. By professional writers.
I panicked a little at first — what he was saying could mean that for four years of university I had painstakingly made sure that the underlined scenario above never happened. Had I been wrong all this time? And had not ONE professor/T.A. ever pointed it out????
So I did some research. Meaning I Googled it. And apparently I’m not alone in wondering what’s up with this.
Here’s some of my findings:
From Quizzes on Punctuation Marks (sounds like fun!!) -
“There are peculiar typographical reasons why the period and
comma go inside the quotation mark in the United States. In the days when printing used raised bits
of metal, “.” and “,” were the most delicate, and were in danger of
damage (the face of the piece of type might break off from the body, or
be bent or dented from above)
if they had a ‘”‘ on one side and a blank space on the other. Hence the
convention arose of always using ‘.”‘ and ‘,”‘ rather than ‘”.’ and
‘”,’, regardless of logic.” This seems to be an argument to return to
something more logical, but there is little impetus to do so within the
United States.”
Wikipedia confirmed this quandary too.
In British English, when a quotation mark appears at the end of a
sentence the full stop is usually placed after it. The matter is partly
determined by the length of the enclosed material: the longer it is,
more acceptable it is that the full stop should come first. Any full
sentence enclosed within quotation marks will have its full stop before
the final quotation mark.
In American English the full stop normally comes before the
quotation mark. (This applies to commas and some other punctuation,
also.)
Examples of typical usage:
- [British:] You say “tomAYto”, I say “tomAHto”.
- [American:] You say “tomAYto,” I say “tomAHto.”
As I’m reading all this the other day, I started vaguely remembering a teacher mentioning this back when I first moved up North. I’m relieved that I hadn’t been neurotic about grammar INCORRECTLY for the four years where (at the time, at least…) it mattered most. While still baffled at this discrepancy, I’m happy to have an answer to what seemed like a countrywide “grammar laxification” epidemic (though the answer still employs so little logic). And I also have an answer to that ever popular question.
“So, really…what’s the thing you find to be MOST different now that you’re living in the U.S.A. and not Canada?”
“Damn full stops showing up before the end quotes. THAT I will NEVER get used to.”
October 31st, 2006 at 7:02 am
This is actually really funny because I had a grade 8 teacher tell us that the proper way was the period INSIDE the quotation and it NEVER made sense to me so I consistently ignored her and always got in trouble for it. I had no idea it was a Canadian/American thing. Thanks for clearing that up, I feel vindicated.