Answer to published criticism of Honorverse

Captain Golding wrote:Argh, English predates programing languages.

?!: all include their own period. SO a sentance does not need both! and . or ?. BOTH are totally wrong.

A Quote should include the original punctuation, right or wrong. But ending .". is indeed redundant in English usage but perfectly valid in quite a few programming languages!

It is not completely correct to say that a question mark includes a period: a question mark concludes an interrogative sentence and a period concludes a declarative sentence. We have had a heated discussion about diacritical marks and whether a character so marked is totally distinct. The Scandinavian languages and the Finnish language, for example, treat the characters with diacritics å, ä, and ö as distinct letters of the alphabet, and sort them after z. I would argue that the period and the question mark are also separate and distinct.

So it is true that the following is incorrect; but the problem is that the period is out of place when the sentence is a question, not simply because it is redundant:
Are you a member of this forum?.

These show redundant periods (because an exclamation can also end an emphatic declarative sentence)
Yes, I am..
or
Yes, I am !.

I am saying that punctuation inside a quote does not eliminate the need for punctuation outside, as far as I am concerned. I will grant that general usage may say I am wrong, but I do not care at this point in my life. The example I come back to is this:
The rabbit said "What's up doc?"

Because that is a declarative statement, which should not be terminated with a question mark. So even if compositors might accept it, I want a period after the closing quote; otherwise it is a sentence fragment passing as a question.

Please note that I did not mention programming languages to show that I was right, instead it was to explain why I was unlikely to change. Also note that these "rules" on style for writing are different in England.

I have a criticism of the HV. Well, a question about a particular scene, anyway.

In OBS when the Pinnace?, was downed and the Stilthies descended upon it and disemboweled its occupant, the Tribarrel?, was ineffective on so many doped-up crazies. I couldn't help but think there should have been a modern version of Napalm. The Pinnace should have been surrounded by a ring of fire.

Fire has a way of snapping even a druggie out of his state of euphoria. Ask Richard Pryor.

cthia wrote:I have a criticism of the HV. Well, a question about a particular scene, anyway.

In OBS when the Pinnace?, was downed and the Stilthies descended upon it and disemboweled its occupant, the Tribarrel?, was ineffective on so many doped-up crazies. I couldn't help but think there should have been a modern version of Napalm. The Pinnace should have been surrounded by a ring of fire.

Fire has a way of snapping even a druggie out of his state of euphoria. Ask Richard Pryor.

They were on the ground too quickly to deploy anything like that. Would it have been better if they set a fire that consumed the skimmer and themselves, than to have died the way that they did?
On Basilisk Station, chapter 27:

The skimmer wasn't armored. Its composites were tough and elastic, but they weren't armor, and more bullets punched through its thin skin. She heard Truman cursing in a high, incredulous falsetto, but his pulser turret was already in action, each barrel spitting fifteen-millimeter explosive darts cased in ceramic frag jackets at a cyclical rate of over a thousand rounds per minute. His fire cut across the ground like a lash of flame, shredding moss and Medusan with equal abandon, yet he could fire in only one direction at a time, and still more armed natives were erupting out of other holes in the ground.