Per said:
Haenlomal said:
Misplaced quotation mark! Or else there is some style guide advocating this (probably American), since it's such a common error. Kind of like the "two spaces following a full stop" plague.
Haenlomal puts on his English tutor hat....
Good call there, Per. You are correct in this particular instance. As a general rule of thumb, if you are quoting the exact name of something, only the name itself should be enclosed in quotes, unless the punctuation itself is part of the quote. In this case, "SAD" is the name, so it should be
"SAD". or
"S.A.D." but not
"SAD."
As for your comment about the American style guide, that's a bit more tricky. In American, periods, commas, semi-colons, question marks, and exclamation marks always go inside the quotation marks regardless of logic. The only exception would be quotation of a proper noun (like above), and even then, it's not strictly observed in American.
There was a practical reason for this (though I really don't know how true this story is: apparently, printing presses in the early days were prone to defect, and for some reason it usually meant that the bottom right hand corner of the plate was not being printed properly. If they followed the strict grammar rules of leaving the punctuation outside the quotation, then the mark would be lost. So the printers reversed the quotation mark and the period. The train of thought here was that the quotation mark is set higher than periods and commas, so in the event of a defect, there's still a good chance that it'll get printed.
By contrast, British and Canadian follow a more logical rule: if the punctuation is part of the quotation, then leave it enclosed in the quotation. Otherwise, out it goes. For example:
James said, "Get down"! <---- James is not quoting anyone. He's making a very emphatic statement. So out goes the exclamation mark.
I heard James say to people, "Get down!" <---- James is being quoted by me, and the exclamation mark is part of conveying the quote. So it stays in.
Given that Fallout is an American product, I'm not surprised at all to see them follow American grammar rules. At the same time, almost nobody pays attention to this kind of stuff anyway, so I won't insist on it one way or the other. I'll be the first person to admit that I don't consistently follow the rules one way or the other.
Haenlomal takes off his English tutor hat...
Cheers,
-- The Haen.