Ring! Ring! Ring!
“Uh, hello. Who is this and uh … dost thou knowest that of which ye speaketh?”
“What?” screeched a familiar, old, raspy voice.
“Aunt Ruth? Is that you?” I asked, mildy annoyed. My clock was displaying 2:14 a.m.
“My voice may be familiar, but it’s not old and it’s not raspy, my Nauseating Nephew.”
All I could do was issue a silent sigh. We sat there a moment or two in early morning quietude.
“Nephew, this reminds me of a scary movie I watched tonight where a sweet potato was trying to hunt down this spud who was eating other potatoes.”
“Uh, I’m not familiar with that movie,” I said, hoping she would just go away and I could go back to sleep.
“Yep, the movie was, ‘The Silence of the Yams’). It was pretty scary, though I’ll say that most of the folks who read this may not be familiar with the real movie and may not get the play on words … but that’s okay because I can demonstrate the problem (with this.)”
“Whoa! Wait!” I shouted. “What does this mean?”
“Wh-what,” she stammered. “What’s wrong?”
“You ended your previous sentence with a close-parenthesis, a period, and a closing double-quote.”
“Well, Nephew, I know that when you end a sentence with a quote, generally the period comes inside the ending quote mark. in America, but I do believe it’s reverse in the UK).”
Correct: Charlotte interrupted Mrs. Clandestine, saying, “Mrs. C, I found Felicity in the microwave.”
Incorrect: Charlotte interrupted Mrs. Clandestine, saying, “Mrs. C, I found Felicity in the microwave“.
“Great Scot!” I blurted.
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Aunt Ruth. “The cat saw the door ajar and seized a place of refuge, presumably away from Mrs. C,” she chuckled.
“Whew! Anyway, your example was fine,” I concurred, giving her a slap on the back.
“Cough … cough,” she coughed.
“And I know,” she continued, “that when you have a phrase ending with a parenthesis and a period, if the full sentence is parenthesized (is that a word?) then you have the period followed by the parenthesis. That is, the whole sentence is enveloped by the parentheses. For example:”
Correct: Norville thought, “I don’t like mean dogs.” (Max is a nice dog.)
Incorrect: Norville thought, “I don’t like mean dogs.” (Max is a nice dog).
“But … Naughty Nephew … what do you do when you have the period, parenthesis, and mixed together?”
“Mixed, as in with a hand whisk, or mixed, as in with a Kitchen-Aid mixer?”
“I’d vote Kitchen-Aid,” she declared.
“Okay, me too.”
I mean, what if you had:
Norville thought, “I don’t like mean dogs (or sheep).”
“Well, Aunt Ruth, I think this works because the closing parenthetical phrase is not a sentence, so the period should be outside the closing parenthesis. And the closing quote goes outside the period. In other words, we’re golden. Next question?”
“But … but … what if the parenthetical clause and the quote are not nested but overlap, lilke:
Norville thought (really, “I don’t like cats, (mean dogs, or sheep).)”
“Aunt Ruth, look at the ending characters: ).)”
“This is confusing,” she moaned.
“Tell me about it. But it’s not hard. We have a paren, followed by a period, followed by a paren, followed by double quote marks. The first paren closes the phrase ‘mean dogs, or sheep). The period is outside this paren because it’s a phrase, not a full sentence. The next paren tries to close off the phrase that Norville thought. But it doesn’t work because the first double quote mark is inside the left paren. That could lead to all kinds of problems.”
“All kinds? Like melted chocolate in your pocket, flat tires, and swarming locusts?”
“Uh, not that kind … but a grammatical conundrum.”
“I saw one of those once.”
“One of which?” I asked, utterly confused.
“I was at a convent, you know, an abbey, and two women were playing percussion. They called it the co-nun-drum.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes. I could do that since this was only a phone call and she couldn’t see me.
“Did you just roll your eyes?”
“How did you –“
“I heard them.”
“Look, Aunt Ruth, I need to get some sleep. So, back to the lesson … the issue seems to be that quotes and parentheses need to be nested (one pair inside the other pair) and not overlap.
“Nosy Nephew, can you think of any examples where that’s not true? Where you can actually have …”…….( ….”…)
Aha! I remember there’s a rule that says one needs to be able to lift the parenthetical expression out of the statement and the statement should still make sense.
“Aunt Ruth, you’ve uncovered a dilemma I hadn’t thought of until now. You’re a genius.”
“Ahh,” she blushed. “You’re too kind. Can I get that statement in writing, notarized, certified, and cast in bronze or something?”
“No.”
“Okay, I’ll accept that.”
“Now, Aunt Ruth, let’s think about this. If we remove the outer parenthetical phrase, we end up with: Norville thought”
Thus, and thusly say I thee unto thou, what we learned today is that if you have quoted phrases and/or parenthetical phrases and they are nested inside each other (rather than overlapping boundaries, where they don’t all match up), then we could have problems and incorrect sentences.
“And,” laughed Aunt Ruth, “that would be most horrible (indeed).”