Quotation marks and commas

[Groucho-14E]

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I dislike being the grammar nerd, but I would prefer that the UFO4P didn't make fixes based solely on one user's preference. With the understanding that I am also only one user, I would like to revisit Bugs #20762 and #20765. Both of these reports object to the placement of a comma inside a quotation mark. Placement of commas and periods inside quotation marks is typical usage in the United States. As evidence of this convention, see the following guidance from Purdue University: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/577/03/. Regardless of whether this convention is "logical" or not, it is what one would expect Bethesda employees to use. Therefore, I strongly suggest that these two bugfixes be reverted to vanilla.

[Arthmoor]

I don't have any particular dog in the hunt for issues like this, but regardless of what that Purdue guide says, my English and grammar classes in grade school taught us the punctuation marks go outside the word in quotes. I would imagine the same teaching is true of a lot of other folks and that's why it got reported to begin with.

[Nico coiN]

Yes, punctuation marks go outside the word in quotes in french, too. But I also understand this statement is probably pointless here...  UFO4P is designed by a US team first.

[Groucho-14E]

Arthmoor, I have no argument with your English teachers; I think that convention makes more sense. My point is not that the person who reported the bug is "wrong" about grammar but that Bethesda didn't make a mistake. If it's not a mistake, then any change is entirely subjective. Better to leave it as-is, in my humble opinion.

[MageKing17]

As a personal fan and user of the Logical style of punctuation, I'd just like to add that I also think that changes like this make me feel a little iffy; the text wasn't wrong, so "fixing" it in the UFO4P feels like changing things for the sake of changing them, rather than fixing real problems (even though, personally, given a choice between the text as it was and the text as it now is, I'd rather have the latter in my game).

 

I feel kinda similarly about #20553, since while everyone refers to it as "Sanctuary" in the post-war period, your character is from the pre-war period and the text only shows up in the UI, rather than being a dialogue/subtitle mismatch or something.

 

That being said, I don't really care if none of these get reverted; while I personally feel like they're a bit of a scope overreach, these aren't particularly strong feelings.

[Nebulous112]

I have no stake in this, but it seems to me that the goal should be consistency, either way.

If Bethesda uses the comma inside quotation marks more often than not, then it makes sense to me to keep it consisent with that. Vice-versa if they do the opposite more often.

But really, IMO arguing over this is pure bikeshedding. It's mice nuts, and I'm sure the team has more important things to worry about. :-P

[Groucho-14E]

I agree with every statement in the two above posts.