this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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The reply happened in Sept. 2022 on Tyler Idol’s account, which she now has pinned to her page, and was unearthed by some right-wing dork on X Wednesday. The reply is now deleted, but according to saved recordings, it simply stated “Wow” and was accompanied by two smiling faces with hearts emoji. As for how you can tell it was from RFK Jr.’s TikTok account, it’s pretty obvious as the avatar is of the anti-vaxxer, and clicking on it took you to the official TikTok page for his campaign.

“Do people really think I was TikToking in 2022,” his post says. “This comment now appears on my account because the account was previously owned by one of the campaign’s young social media managers.”

I've always found it weird how Americans mandate putting punctuation inside quotes at all times.

It does appear that he has a point as the first video on his TikTok account was uploaded in May 2023, which was a month after he officially declared he was running for office. That was back when he was calling himself a Democrat, only to pivot to running as an independent candidate last October, and then to consider going for the libertarian ticket earlier this week. Mind you, former President Donald Trump’s camp did reach out at some point to discuss the anti-vaxxer as a VP pick. With such variable political leanings, maybe he should just run on the TikTok ticket.

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (16 children)

I've always found it weird how Americans mandate putting punctuation inside quotes at all times.

Wait, is it an American thing? I thought it was an English language thing.

Edit: yup. English language thing. I do concede that it took me a while to get used to it, since in Spanish we don't do that.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Where else would the punctuation go except inside the quote? If you are quoting the end of a sentence then wouldn’t it make sense to have it there? Having the quote stop then just having a period floating in the abyss at the end would not only look stupid but defeat the point of the quote!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (2 children)

But the punctuation isn't part of the original text, and putting the punctuation inside the quote marks loses information on the original text's punctuation. Periods do not need any puny comfort from two fucking lines.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

As an American I wholeheartedly agree. I HATED learning about that dumb rule and refuse to use it to this day. The punctuation, I would say more often than not, has nothing to do with the quote and should be outside the quotation mark.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I mean we can change the rules, they’re not set in stone. Join me in placing punctuation that is not part of a quote outside the quotation marks!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

“Periods do not need any puny comfort from two fucking lines.”.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

😱

when you quote a complete sentence, and the sentence only consists of that sentence, you can just omit the period after the final quote mark

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It looks better the way I do it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Username checks out

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago

By some style guides, if you are ending your sentence with a quote but the quote is not the end of a sentence, your end-of-sentence period goes inside the quotation marks even though it is not part of the quote.

Generally this style is called 'traditional quotation', while the verbatim style is called 'new' or 'logical' quotation. Traditional quotation was preferred for typesetting or prettiness reasons, but is going out of vogue because it is illogical.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Why the fuck are we discussing nothing other than the punctuation question?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Cuz it's interesting? What the "fuck" else do we need to discuss about this actual event?

[–] gravitas_deficiency 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Narrator:

He was incredibly thirsty

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

In the thumbnail, he looks downright dehydrated for booty.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

So we're all just gonna talk like middle schoolers now huh

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm on board with original punctuation going inside the quote, but then to be consistent, capitalization has to as well. So instead of "This comment..." it should be "this comment..." since in the original quote that was just a clause separated by a comma, not its own sentence.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

I usually try to avoid that scenario and put the first character in brackets if I absolutely need to do that.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Having reviewed the aforementioned account very carefully, I have come to the conclusion that Wow is the appropriate reply here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

The punctuation inside quotes thing is one of those rules where I know what the correct way of doing it is, but I intentionally do it wrong because I think more people do it the wrong way in practice. I guess it depends on context; I might do it the correct way in formal work correspondence.

FWIW my teachers in school always said it was a thing that came from typesetting. But I have no idea if that's actually true.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

In the days of the printing press, it was not feasible to have type blocks for single punctuation marks. The blocks would be too small and fragile. Punctuation marks were appended to the end of the letter. Instead of having a single block with a period (.) they had a block for each letter of the alphabet with a period. (a.), (b.), etc. Making blocks for both (",) and (,") was an unnecessary expense, so they went with (,"), and the convention stuck. —@[email protected]

At least, it stuck in the USA.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Interesting. I was taught that if the punctuation was in the quote, put it within the quotation marks. Otherwise I was to put it outside the marks. (American)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Whoever posted this put the thing about punctuation in there so we’d focus on that instead of the story.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I mean honestly I could give two shits about what the antivaxxer does. There's zero chance I vote for him anyway.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

I intentionally break that rule often, unless I'm writing a narrative or something for consumption by an audience of people senior to me.

Outside is much more logical.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This is what’s called a “hit piece”. It is an example of “propaganda”, which falls under the broader category of “bullshit”.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I think the phrase you're looking for is "soft news", which does, in fact, have its place in society.