The Liberty Papers

I am a stickler for grammar, but it is also one of my pet peeves. Especially in this day and age when you can easily get resources to help you write better online, the best listed in this article by Brenda Barron.

So on National Grammar Day, I’d like to post a few of them.

#1 – Nested parentheses: The general grammar rule is never to nest parentheses. But as an engineer with the combination of math, computer code, and boolean logic backgrounds, nested parentheses seem so natural to me that I largely try to ignore this rule. I’ve been getting better about this, such that when I first write something using nested parentheses I make sure to take a close look at it to determine if there’s a better way to phrase it such that it doesn’t require nesting. But if I think it’s required, I ignore the rule.

#2 – Punctuation inside quotes: I don’t like putting punctuation inside quotes unless necessary. Take this following sentence. Did Bob ask you “where are you going?” It’s a question inside a question. I’d like to put a question mark before and after the quotation marks, because there is a question nested inside the quotes and the entire sentence is a question. Or likewise, the following sentence. Did Bob say “the sky is blue”? Correct grammar is to put the question mark inside the quote. But “the sky is blue” is a statement, not a question.

So I’ll open it to the floor. Feel free to fill the comments with your own grammar pet peeves; alternatively to pick apart any mistakes I’ve made in this post.

Hat Tip: Kevin Drum