Quote:
Originally Posted by Solitaire1
I speak American English, but the following should also apply to British English. When it comes to formatting with HTML, I treat a punctuation mark as part of the word that it is next to.
|
I speak Australian English, Solitaire1, and I'd say the exact opposite.
I know Microsoft Word operates the way you've advocated here, so that punctuation at the end of a word - and even the space following that punctuation - is included in any attribute applied to that word (like italicising), even when the punctuation actually belongs to the phrase or clause and not just to that word. To my (subjective) way of thinking, this makes a document look rather scrappy - when the last word of direct speech is italicised, for instance, you end up with:
"I told you to shut the
door," she said.
rather than
"I told you to shut the
door," she said.
To me, the latter is definitely preferable, in reading sense but even more so in appearance.
(I use WordPerfect for documents, which allows the word to be selected independent of the punctuation when applying styles or attributes. Though that's not the specific reason I use it - it's simply a better word-processor than MS Word - it does add to its appeal for me.)
I wonder if it's a US English thing? I know in US English the punctuation also goes inside what they call quote marks, even when it's not part of the phrase quoted, so maybe the punctuation being bolded or italicised is an extension of the same approach.