Search results for 'tag:American English tag:Quoting' matching tags 'American English' and 'Quoting'

Re: Punctuation within quotes?

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:37:56 GMT

For american English, a period ending a sentence should always go inside the quotation marks. A question mark ending a sentence goes inside the quotation marks if you are quoting a question, outside if you are asking a question, inside if both. You should never have punctuation both inside and outside the quotation marks.

She said, "Go to the store."
Did she say "Go to the store"?
She said, "Should I go to the store?"
Did she say "Should I go to the store?"

Re: "I have" why not "I has"

Marvin A. — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 23:41:17 GMT

EDIT: the quoting feature doesn't seem to be working right now. I used "----" to represent quotes.
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I wish to know "Why 'have' is used after I instead of 'has'.
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The verb to "have" comes from the Old English verb "habban".

I have was "Ic haebbe"
Thou hast was "Thu haefst"
He has was "He haefth"

Later on, the standard form from the 3rd person singular became "hath". After that, the Northern dialect form won out, which used -s as the ending, rather than -th. So, the standard form became "has".

"Thou" dropped out of common use, and was completely replaced with the plural (acc) "you".
Therefore its ending died with it (thu haefst -> thou hast -> 0)

So, in the singular, we are left with "I have" and "He has".

So, as you can see, "has" simply comes from the Northern dialect form for "hath". "I have" was originally "haebbe", but became regularized to "have".

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Because otherwise we use "have" after plurals (they, we, etc.) and "has" after singulars (he, she, it). Why then we use "have" after I (singular).
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It has nothing really to do with singular and plurals. The rule is not "it's have for plurals, and has for singulars." The plural forms were all regularized to "have", as was the first person singular. Originally they had different forms. The third person singular was not regularized, and the second person singular dropped out of common use in most modern dialects of English--it would be "thou hast".

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e.g. We say "I have got a pen". Why not "I has got a pen".
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In certain dialects of English, such as British English, "I have got" is considered correct. In my dialect, as well as in several other North American English dialects, "I have got" is considered incorrect, although the contracted form "I've got" is occasionally used in informal speech by people. We use simply "I have". We do use "I've gotten" though, but it does not mean "I have", but rather "I've received."

Re: Is American English lazy English?

Elida — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 13:03:22 GMT

Mike In Japan wrote:
Hi Elida, welcome to the forums.

Well, we were talking about irregular English usage, and Anonymous had made a post with a couple of irregularities in spelling; hough for though, and peole for people, which I used as an example.
Marvin then joked about the way I should spell English. You see, most people in Japan (where I am) have trouble pronouncing 'l' so he joked by spelling it as Engrish.

Cheers :-)

First of all...let me tell you that the "ANonymous" was me.(before signing in cuz i was having problems with my registration...look at the names carefully.). As u can see i'm still writing irregular english...cuz that's the way i write when i chat. Regarding "ough" instead of "though" wasn't my mistake (if you look at the previous page you'll understand it. it was Marvin's mistake when quoting me). Regarding "peole" instead of "people" it was a typo(my mistake).

Well..yeah...i know you were joking around...just wanted to know why.

Quoting & Spelling

shaffa2 — Sat, 16 Apr 2005 00:32:56 GMT

I was wondering if and how quotes should be edited when, for example, my essay is in British English, but my quotation is in American English.

Also, in this century old text Phoenicia is written with a special kind of 'oe' (they're linked together). Should I alter this word into modern spelling? If so, how? If not, where can I find this 'oe' on my computer?

In general, must spelling differences / mistakes be 'corrected'?

Does this differ as to which format one uses? MLA, APA, what have you...

Thanks.

Re: Quotation mark

Mike A. — Wed, 19 Nov 2003 03:02:42 GMT

In American English, the standard practice is to put the punctuation (period, comma, etc.) inside double quotes: "Hello," she said. The exception is if there is some special need to make sure that the reader not think that the punctuation was part of the original source you are quoting, then you put the punctuation outside the quotation marks

I think the British practice is just the opposite of ours. I believe the practice in the U.K. is to put punctuation outside the quotation marks: In Britain, they call quotation marks "inverted commas". (British speakers, please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.)

One frequent use of single quotes is to isolate a quote within a quote. In other words, when you are quoting source A, and source A itself is quoting source B. If I were quoting a speech by President Bush in which he quoted a phrase of Abraham Lincoln's, the whole quote would be set off in double quotes, but the quotation from Lincoln would be in single quotes within the double quotes. An imaginary example: "My fellow Americans, as Abraham Lincoln once said on a solemn occasion: 'Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers ... '."

Mike A.