from this post

i realized i have strong opinions about punctuation

so instead of bothering a random person in my discord dms with too many messages about it i'm writing one message about it on tumblr.com

punctuation surrounding quotation marks is bullshit. every standard for it is dumb and wrong and makes your text less readable.

• DON'T put a comma at the end of a piece of dialogue, it doesn't make sense at all.
• DON'T put the punctuation before the quotation mark unless it's actually a part of the thing you're quoting.
• DON'T use the quote's final punctuation as the final punctuation of your sentence. i would seriously rather read "...and he said 'snorp glop?'." over trying to figure out whether the question mark is making your text a question or denoting that the original quote was a question. yes this is an actual problem i encounter, i'm autistic
• in-text citations are cool but formatting for them is extra bullshit because now the period gets all fucky wucky and goes wherever it fucking wants to depending on how big the quote is and where in the sentence it appears EXCEPT there aren't any good standards AT ALL for if the quote doesn't appear at the end of a sentence because... i guess you're not supposed to put it there? but like, why though

i also think parentheses and other grouping symbols should follow these same rules. this includes the period at the end of a parenthetical citation.

when you are writing a period, ask yourself this: does the period actually end the sentence you're writing? if so, consider ACTUALLY PUTTING THE PERIOD AFTER THE END OF THE DAMN SENTENCE YOU FUCKING ACADEMIC NUMBNUTS