Periods

I grew up in California, but I actually got a fairly decent education. Hard to believe, I know. So my grammar is better than a lot today and my vocabulary is better than a lot today and I am more aware of proper sentence structure and such than most today. Oh, I'm not perfect at it, but I try to work at it.

It doesn't take a genius to know, for instance, that Jennifer Hudson's new song title, "Where You At?", is an English nightmare. (Try "Where are you?" or, less correct, "Where're you at?", but not that title.) But the truth is that it's getting much harder to even know what's right anymore. I was taught, for instance, that you never end a sentence with a preposition. (How many of today's American youngsters even know what a preposition is?) Of course, it's fairly common to violate that rule -- so common that it's not likely a rule anymore. That's one that I can think of. (See?) I normally write the possessive form of "Jesus" as "Jesus's" because that's actually the correct way to write it. It's not the common way (and I've even had some complain to me about it), but it's right even if it's obscure. Common usage (read "violations") has negated common rules and what used to be "poor writing" is the new "normal".

Now, if you read that last sentence, you'll find that I did, in fact, violate the rules. It is wrong to put that period at the end of the sentence outside the quotation mark. Yes, that's wrong. Why? Well, according to my reading, it's a question of typesetting. In the old days of typesetting, a period outside of a quotation mark could easily get knocked out of position. (It's the same basic reason that we were originally taught to put two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence.)

The problem for me, you see, is that it's not logical. I mean, I get it when you are writing a sentence within the quote marks.

Tina said, "Bob went to the show."

That period should be inside. I got it. No problem. But what if it's not a complete sentence?

They called themselves "Christians".

That is wrong. It should be, according to the rules, that the period would go inside the closing quotation mark. But that doesn't make sense. The stuff inside the quotation marks was not a sentence. The sentence that the period is ending occurred outside those marks. It's not logical.

Ah, well, such is life. As it turns out, it's primarily an American rule that the commas and periods (almost) always go inside the quotation marks. British English has no such rule. Well, I'm not British, so I guess I can't find solace there. Still, since I tend to think about what I write, perhaps I'll just keep doing it that way. I mean, it's correct somewhere in the world, right? If any of you find that it confuses you -- harms your understanding of what I'm saying -- you be sure to let me know, okay? That's really my aim, after all. You just say so and I'll see if I can get my periods to be conformist rather than logical.