User talk:FTW

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Hi FTW, I've just added an image from (one of?) Talhoffers Fechtbuchs to Hans Talhoffer because I'd uploaded it to wikipedia for the article on rondel (dagger). You might want to sort out the caption though, it looks like you know more about him than I do. It's from the 1467 one according to the page I found it on online. [1]  :) Fabiform 01:05, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hello, FTW. I've returned the punctuation marks at H. P. Lovecraft to their original locations. An explanation: placing punctuation outside of quotation marks, rather than within them, is not only considered acceptable by modern authorities, but it is also more logical, if I may say so. :-) Here's an excerpt from the Manual of Style:

When punctuating quoted passages, put punctuation where it belongs, inside or outside the quotation marks, depending on the meaning, not rigidly within the quotation marks. This is the British style (Fowler has good guidelines for this). For example, "Stop!" has the punctuation inside the quotation marks. However, when using "scare quotes", the comma goes outside.

Another example:

Arthur said the situation was "deplorable". (we're quoting only part of a sentence)

Arthur said, "The situation is deplorable." (full sentence is quoted)

But this does not quite apply to our situation; our goal here is, for example, to determine the punctuation in the Lovecraft article for "squamous". IDRC's description is more relevant:

There are two accepted (but mutually exclusive) rules of thumb for the use of punctuation with quotations marks: Fowler's Modern English Usage refers to them as the logical and the conventional rules.

The two rules are equally correct, although people using the logical style tend to consider the conventional placement of punctuation to be incorrect.

"The logical punctuates according to sense" and puts punctuation outside the quotation marks except when they are actually part of the quote.

"The conventional prefers to put stops within ..., if it can be done without ambiguity, on the ground that this has a more pleasing appearance."

The "logical" style (my preference) can be seen throughout Wikipedia, as well as in the Lovecraft article. So, I hope you will accept my brashness in negating your two edits there. Please feel free to ask me for a better explanation, or further clarification. Take care. Chris Roy 21:31, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Hello Chris: By all means, leave the Lovecraft article edited any way you want. I did manage to find some examples of Lovecraft's own writing that follow a similar punctuation style. I am not surprised that he wouldn't follow the "logical" style. FTW 17:33, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Beyond the Wall of Sleep

But I did place upon his head and mine the two ends of my cosmic "radio," hoping against hope for a first and last message from the dream world in the brief time remaining.

The Unnamable

There in the dark, upon that riven tomb by the deserted house, we talked on about the "unnamable," and after my friend had finished his scoffing I told him of the awful evidence behind the story at which he had scoffed the most.

Through the Gates of the Silver Key

The hills behind Arkham were searched for the "metal envelope," but nothing of the sort was ever found.

The Picture in the House

I had turned to a neighboring shelf and was examing its meagre literary contents - an eighteenth century Bible, a "Pilgrim's Progress" of like period, illustrated with grotesque woodcuts and printed by the almanack-maker Isaiah Thomas, the rotting bulk of Cotton Mather's "Magnalia Christi Americana," and a few other books of evidently equal age - when my attention was aroused by the unmistakable sound of walking in the room overhead.

Hello again. Since your feeling of unsurprise considering that Lovecraft "wouldn't follow the 'logical' style" surprised me, considering that Lovecraft was an Anglophile and the so-called logical style is more popular in Britain, I also viewed some examples from Lovecraft's writings. My findings are a little different from yours. As a source I used The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, published by Penguin and edited by S. T. Joshi. On page xx, there's a note on the text:

Although the texts in this edition are similar to those found in my Arkham House editions of Lovecraft's tales (1984–86), they have been recollated from manuscripts and early printed sources, with the result that several additional errors have been corrected.

As this edition contains "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", I flipped to the page containing its respective excerpt retranscribed by you above:

But I did place upon his head and mine the two ends of my cosmic "radio"; hoping against hope for a first and last message from the dream-world in the brief time remaining.

A bit of a difference, wouldn't you say? I'm not saying that you're being untruthful; I'm saying that you are using as a source earlier, uncorrected editions of Lovecraft's works, which differ from corrected ones such as The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories in subtle but often important ways. I would check this editions's companion volume, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, but a friend of mine is borrowing it; I'd check the Arkham House editions, but I've only ever checked them out of the library, and without caring about their punctuaton style. :-)

Here are some more examples from The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories:

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

"Custodes", "Materia"; that was the Latin for "Guards" and "Materials", respectively—and then there came a flash of memory as to where he had seen that word "Guards" before in connexion with this dreadful mystery.

At the Mountains of Madness

He has on rare occasions whispered disjointed and irresponsible things about "the black pit", "the carven rim", "the proto-shoggoths", "the windowless solids with five dimensions", "the nameless cylinder", "the elder pharos", "Yog-Sothoth", "the primal white jelly", "the colour out of space", "the wings", "the eyes in darkness", "the moon-ladder", "the original, the eternal, the undying", and other bizarre conceptions. . .

Nothing is written in stone, unless of course it is written in stone: the disparity between our respective examples shows not just that early publishers "corrected" Lovecraft's sometimes idiosyncratic style (including, it would appear, his use of the logical punctuation scheme), thereby passing the errors onto future editions uncorrected, but that the matter isn't particularly important in the first place. Millions of people, including us, have enjoyed reading Lovecraft's uncorrected stories with no loss in pleasure or disgust. Chris Roy 23:53, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I've found, in my searches of the past hour, multiple examples of both forms of punctuation--in the exact same passages. I think this proves the text has been edited frequently. However, I did find something that may help find the answer to this question. S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz have edited a book called The Shadow out of Time: The Corrected Text. This book is an exact transcription of Lovecraft's original handwritten manuscript found in 1995. An examination of this book should settle the question.

Since both forms of punctuation are correct, now it just remains to see what form of punctuation he used. Whatever the result, it was fun looking at all the versions. FTW 05:48, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well, I stand corrected. Lovecraft himself seems to have been in favor of the "logical" punctuation style. I have found several instances of it in The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft, edited by S.T. Joshi. FTW 14:22, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)