# "English" vs. "American" style punctuation

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/english-vs-american-style-punctuation/269>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [May 14, 2007, 3:34am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/english-vs-american-style-punctuation/269 "2007-05-14T03:34:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![John\_P\_McCaskey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@John\_P\_McCaskey](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/John_P_McCaskey)\
**Post date:** [May 14, 2007, 3:34am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/english-vs-american-style-punctuation/269/1 "2007-05-14T03:34:11Z")

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Does anyone on the list have an opinion or background on the following, a  
subject related to a few recently discussed?

In American style punctuation, a period or comma goes inside a quotation  
mark, even if logically it belongs outside. English style (and some  
technical styles where the precision is important) allow leaving the  
punctuation outside the quotation. American: “in the house.” English: “in  
the house”.

It’s a pet peeve of mine that it’s very difficult to get Endnote to produce  
a consistent American style, and in the Zotero Word plug-in I’m working on,  
I’d like to correct this. (It’s difficult because the note usually gets laid  
down before the user has indicated the subsequent punctuation.)

It looks like current CSL (at least that used in Zotero) uses American-style  
punctuation.

Should I assume the following?

- All the CSLs have been written American style.
- This is not determined by a switch within a style’s definition. If you  
want English style, you create a new CSL. You don’t set a parameter in a  
current one.
- What I’ve called English style is not a hard rule, and that what I’ve  
called American style is acceptable everywhere.

If that’s all true, then there would be an inconsistency if a word-processor  
used an American-style CSL to produce a citation, but then English-style  
around the citation. No?

It seems a word processor either needs to use current CSLs and figure out  
the magic to get consistent American style, or get new English-style CSLs.

Do any word-processors do the first? Do any batch-oriented typesetting  
tools?

Any leads on how I should be thinking about this would be appreciated.

John

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**Author:** ![Simon\_Kornblith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce7236/32.png) [@Simon\_Kornblith](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Simon_Kornblith)\
**Post date:** [May 14, 2007, 3:56am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/english-vs-american-style-punctuation/269/2 "2007-05-14T03:56:46Z")

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CSL now contains (as per my demands) a “quotes” attribute, which  
should eliminate the need for a separate style for American and  
British users. While I’m not sure that all styles have been adapted  
to use this attribute, it would not be difficult to do so.

The best solution, I suppose, would be to have a Zotero preference  
controlling quote style, which is used when formatting citations, and  
gets passed to the Word plug-in if necessary (perhaps in the response  
to setDocPrefs). If you see any problem with this, let me know.

Simon

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**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [May 14, 2007, 11:20am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/english-vs-american-style-punctuation/269/3 "2007-05-14T11:20:53Z")

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I pretty much agree with what Simon said. Ideally this is a config  
option somewhere (not exactly sure where), and that one not create  
special us-gb styles. CSL styles are supposed to be be  
language-independent, and we need to figure out how to maintain that  
after we made the decision to go down that road.

Also …

> It’s a pet peeve of mine that it’s very difficult to get Endnote to  
> produce a consistent American style, and in the Zotero Word plug-in  
> I’m working on, I’d like to correct this.

I like this attitude!

…

> Do any word-processors do the first? Do any batch-oriented typesetting  
> tools?

You could look into the TeX world, except that BibTeX generally has  
poor support for the humanities and note-style citations. Maybe  
something like Jurabib? There was also another new package explicitly  
for note-style citations, but I forget the name at the moment.

Bruce

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**Author:** ![John\_P\_McCaskey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@John\_P\_McCaskey](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/John_P_McCaskey)\
**Post date:** [May 14, 2007, 3:32pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/english-vs-american-style-punctuation/269/4 "2007-05-14T15:32:30Z")

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Thanks Simon and Bruce. That all sounds good, and I’ll proceed on the plugin  
on the assumption that at some point, on the Zotero side, the right CSLs  
will get used (if they are not there already) and the preference will get  
added as you suggest.

John