Page:The king's English (IA kingsenglish00fowlrich).pdf/299

short of fine handsome stops like the exclamation and question marks, they would be countenancing an anticlimax. But they are really mere conservatives, masquerading only as aesthetes; and their conservatism will soon have to yield. Argument on the subject is impossible; it is only a question whether the printer's love for the old ways that seem to him so neat, or the writer's and reader's desire to be understood and to understand fully, is to prevail.

Another objector takes a stronger position. He admits that logic, and not beauty, must decide: 'but before we give up the old, let us be sure we are giving it up for a new that is logical'. He invites our attention to the recent paragraph containing Beadnell's views. 'Why, in the last sentence of that paragraph, is the full stop outside? "But the exclamation follows the same rule as the interrogation" is a complete sentence, quoted; why should its full stop be separated from it?' The answer is that the full stop is not its full stop; it needs no stop, having its communications forward absolutely cut off by the quotation mark. It is a delusion to suppose that any sentence has proprietary rights in a stop, though it may have in a tone symbol; a stop is placed after it merely to separate it from what follows, if necessary.—'And the full stop after every last sentence (not a question or exclamation) of a paragraph, chapter, or book?'—Is illogical, and only to be allowed, like those in the isolated quotations mentioned in rule (1 a), in deference to universal custom. Our full stop belongs, not to the last sentence of the quotation, but to the paragraph, which is all one sentence, the whole quotation simply playing the part, helped by the quotation marks, of object to says.—'But says is followed by a colon, and a colon between verb and object breaks your own rules.'—No; (:—) is something different from a stop; it is an extra quotation mark, as much a conventional symbol as the full stop in M.A. and other abbreviations.—'Well, then, instead of says, read continues, to which the quotation clearly cannot be object; will that affect