iPad Edition of The New Yorker Has 100,000 Readers

[pocket3d]

It's random, but interesting that placing it outside is referred to as "logical punctuation".
In other words, both are correct - do what humours (or humors) you.

As long as I'm here defending the poor New Yorker from the barbarians . . . :

Gruber was talking about this recently. He's going for "logical," and he of all people writing today represents one piece of the future of journalism. (Note that I'm going for American traditional.) I say that because he's careful, he thinks about typography, and he doesn't even have to, since he so works for himself.

But I seem to remember back in the 70s when phototypesetting was obsolescing the dangling-lead-period reason, we decided that it just looked better inside the quotes. And I seem to remember the Chicago style manual also made an argument based on aesthetics. I don't know where my old copy is, or I would look it up.

It still trips me up every time when I see that orphaned dot hanging out there in empty space. Even if it is more logical to put it out there.

 

[C.Calthrop]

Buggy, but great potential

The New Yorker app is pretty much what an iPad magazine should be except for the bugs. It crashes more than any app on either the iPad or iPhone. It has never been updated. If The New Yorker iPad app is doing that well Condé Nast can afford to fix the bugs. While they are at it they could allow a couple or few words to be copied so we can paste them into Google.

 

[dontmatter]

Couple of very sincere questions:

Is any of the content in this publication NOT available somewhere else for free online?

Is the content that much better than what you would find from various free blogs (ad supported)?

Yes, the New Yorker keeps maybe 1/4 of its content as paid only. Some of that is blogs, some of that is cover articles.

Admitting that I have the bias of a regular reader, I would say that I'd be hard pressed to find blogs that filled what the New Yorker does. They specialize in very in depth articles with extensive background research on unusual topics - not the kind of thing many blogs have the time or money to do. Often these are profiles of people that bloggers would not have access to.

And, to the extent that presentation matters, if the ipad app is any good, it faces almost no competition its closest digital rival: the New Yorker website sucks. It has almost no ability to draw you in and keep you reading (it has improved a little lately, but is still leagues behind Wired or The NY Times in using the format to engage)

 

[dontmatter]

Time is money. Your not just paying for the content your also paying for someone [whose judgement you respect] to collate it all together for you.

Agreed. An enormous part of the appeal of the New Yorker is that it puts so many disparate things together in one place, and they're all fascinating and brilliantly written. If you know what you like, you can find incredible things on the web. If you like a broader array, you can use Stumbleupon or the like, but you rarely pick the best of an area you don't know. If you are addicted to discovery and want almost everything to be thought provoking, moving, and incredibly written, then the New Yorker it is.

(assuming, of course, that what it thinks is interesting is what you do, that the styles of writing in it are styles that work for you. For me, it's like that friend who has all the same musical tastes as you, but has spent vastly more time exploring and developing them, except that it is for culture, instead of music)

 

[cozmot]

Brother, you should read current style guides.

The "old style" in the US was to violate the sense of the sentence and put commas and periods *before* quotes, parentheses and other grouping punctuation - even when logically the comma/period belonged after the quote. (In the UK, this violation wasn't the norm.)

This violation was because the lead (as in Pb) type elements were very narrow, and it was easier and less error-prone to construct the templates for pressing if the narrow elements were before some wider elements at the end of the sentence.

Since when did commas and periods before quotes become the "old style"? What current style guide in the U.S. says otherwise? The Capital College Community Foundation, in its Guide to Grammar and Writing, writes, "In the United States, periods and commas go inside quotation marks regardless of logic." (See Guide.)

The AP Style Book says, "Periods always go inside quotation marks." (Page 361.)

The Chicago Manual of Style says, "Periods and commas precede closing quotation marks, whether double or single. This is a traditional style, in use well before the first edition of this manual (1906)." (Section 6:8)

The Purdue (University) Online Writing Lab says, "...the period or comma punctuation always comes before the final quotation mark." (See OWL.)

There are exceptions, of course, such as with parenthetical citations, but you need to cite authoritative and widely-accepted sources to back up your claim that there's a "new style" in place.

 

[cozmot]

So does that mean that the rule is no longer followed in places like newspaper style guides?

No, that does not mean that the rule is no longer followed in places like newspaper style guides. The AP Style Book says, "Periods always go inside quotation marks." Look at any U.S. newspaper and see if commas and periods fall outside of quotation marks. Here's a quote from a story in today's Washington Post: "This has helped crystallize the debate. There is no doubt there will be a very distinct choice." Notice that the period went before the closing quote mark. It always does.

Don't let a tech blog be your guide to grammar. Don't even take my word for it. Check out all the style guides out there.

 

[Tiger8]

I don't think I am better than anyone else. I was making the point that being from Jersey shouldn't make people assume things.

Hoboken rules!

 

[AidenShaw]

"A punctuation paradigm is shifting."

No, that does not mean that the rule is no longer followed in places like newspaper style guides. The AP Style Book says, "Periods always go inside quotation marks." Look at any U.S. newspaper (emphasis added) and see if commas and periods fall outside of quotation marks. Here's a quote from a story in today's Washington Post: "This has helped crystallize the debate. There is no doubt there will be a very distinct choice."

And at the same time, do a web search for "logical punctuation". The British English standard is rapidly gaining traction outside of a few old-school guides. (Many at MacRumours say that "print is dead", so referencing print style guides seems like an archaic throwback. )

For example:

...
But in copy-editor-free zones—the Web and emails, student papers, business memos—with increasing frequency, commas and periods find themselves on the outside of quotation marks, looking in. A punctuation paradigm is shifting.

Indeed, unless you associate exclusively with editors and prescriptivists, you can find copious examples of the "outside" technique—which readers of Virginia Woolf and The Guardian will recognize as the British style — no further away than your Twitter or Facebook feed. I certainly can. Conan O'Brien, for example, recently posted:

Conan's staffers' kids say the darndest things. Unfortunately, in this case "darndest" means "incriminating",​

...
http://www.slate.com/id/2293056/

logical punctuation

a recommended approach to placing punctuation where the punctuation is logically grouped with the part of the sentence it applies to, rather than where arbitrary rules imply it should go. For instance, your grammar teachers said to put commas and periods inside quotes like this:

“Reading is fun,” said the grammar teacher.​

Commas were originally put inside quotes as an artifact of how type was set. Now that text appears on a screen, it makes more sense to put it outside the quote:

“The Web is more fun”, says the tech-writer.​

Use punctuation where it makes sense. Use commas to indicate pauses, and to reduce ambiguity.

http://www.usabilityfirst.com/glossary/logical-punctuation/ (quoted in entirety)

The US style guides are based on technology that goes back to the 15th century and Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg. We're in the "post moveable-type" era now, and the world (outside the US) has changed.

The CMS and AP are under pressure to modernize the archaic parts of their style guides.

So, if you're sending your CV to a US newspaper or publisher, following the AP/CMS style is a good idea.

If you're writing less formally, or sending your CV to an international English newspaper or publisher, it is not an error to follow logical punctuation.

Notice that the period went before the closing quote mark. It always does.

Perhaps you should check the various US style guides, and look at the cases where the comma/period go outside the quotation mark. It doesn't "always" go inside.

One example is if the quotation is a literal letter - then even some US guides put the comma outside. For example:

• Correct: I laugh when I see the letter "Q", it just strikes me as funny.
• Incorrect: I laugh when I see the letter "Q," it just strikes me as funny.

Never say "always" or "never", it just takes one counterexample to prove you wrong.

 

[Lesser Evets]

There's that many people who read that garbage?

Go figure. Old habits must die hard. That rag hasn't had anything worth reading for about 3 decades now, and yes I read it at the stands every so often.

Acutally, I can't think of one magazine worth reading. The best mags are sales mags like Hemmings. It is unabashed about what it is, unlike the others whom cover their advertising core with dog sh-t articles and propaganda.

 

[pocket3d]

Go figure. Old habits must die hard. That rag hasn't had anything worth reading for about 3 decades now, and yes I read it at the stands every so often.

Acutally, I can't think of one magazine worth reading. The best mags are sales mags like Hemmings. It is unabashed about what it is, unlike the others whom cover their advertising core with dog sh-t articles and propaganda.

Old habits like thinking, curiosity and appreciation of good writing . . .

But you already know everything. By the way, that should be "who" and not "whom." "Whom" is the objective case. In your sentence, "others who" would be the subject of the clause, and thus take the nominative case.

Understand? I thought not.

 

[Atlantico]

20 thousand subscribers on the iPad, 1 MILLION subscribers of the print edition.

I'm not saying print isn't dead; but the iPad version is a major flop.

2% of subscribers are paying iPad subscribers. I'm sure it's nice and all, but a success it is not.