Typos in the Nuwz…I Mean News: BBC, AOL, and Time Warner
The ever-confusing conundrum of the order of closing quotation marks and punctuation. There are certain circumstances in which the closing quotation mark comes before a piece of punctuation and others when it comes after. Usually when a direct quote is involved the piece of punctuation goes inside the quotation mark like this:
Together they would form, in the words of their press release: “The world’s first fully-integrated media and communications company for the internet century.”
In The BBC‘s article, “Why AOL Time Warner failed to change the world,” the previous quote appeared. In the same article, however, this quote also appeared:
“Shockwaves from the merger are already being felt around the business world”.
In the first example, the punctuation went inside the quotation mark and in the second, a sentence of similar construction, the punctuation went outside the quotation mark…hmm.
Unfortunately for The BBC, not only is this second sentence grammatically incorrect, it is not consistent with the manner in which quotes are managed elsewhere in the article. I praise you, BBC, for your excellent reporting and I look forward to the day of grammatical perfection in online news copy.
