people in high places are in on the killtaker

i hate it when people put punctuation marks on the outside of quotation marks. and i'm looking at you, asshole. i'll quote from my brother's last blog: "they're both pretty bad just like yoda is a pretty bad and selfish jedi 'master'." what the fuck is that all about? i thought this was america.

if you want to know the general rules of quotation marks and punctuation, look here. in brief, if you're from writing in the united states you place commas and periods inside quotation marks even if what you're quoting has none. however, you do not place semi-colons inside quotation marks.

to be clear, i hate grammar rules so much. well, that's not entirely true. i hate the idea of perscriptive grammar. since human language preceded grammar, grammar can only be a description of language. plus, and this is especially true for american english, language isn't constant but is constantly changing. so whatever is grammatical one day doesn't mean shit the next day. we evolved language capabilities; god didn't set up the grammar rules in the council in heaven.

but this problem i have with quotations and punctuations is related to my problem with grammar snobs. one thing almost all snobs in the us have in common is a love of all things british. for instance, you can tell a person is a snob if they like the british office more than the american office. a non-snob will tell you they're both great. similarly, citizens of the united states who insist on placing periods and commas outside of quotation marks are exactly like those jerks who refuse to give the us office a chance.

aaron, i thought you we're better than than that. you we're my brother. i loved you. you were the chosen one. and so on.