On 2/28/2018 09:27, Igor PDML-StR wrote:
Christine,
Thanks for your comment. I agree with most of what you said, except
for the style issue that John has also commented on (below). I
actually did not remember that Strunk & White had it defined, so, I
was relying just on the common sense: you don't need to
revert/invert/turn you head around or jump on one foot to match the
order in the caption to that in the photo. Any style that says
differently is impractical and inefficient.
In my work I've dealt with several different styles, primarily those
that technical journals use. The most prominent ones include American
Institute of Physics (AIP) style and IEEE style. I tend to think that
the initial idea of any of those styles is to provide a (standard)
tool for effective (and often efficient) communication. The problem,
however, is where some provisions and rules (often stale and
outdated, or sometimes purely historical, based on no practical
consideration) are inefficient or illogical, and the style
Cerberus[es] refuse to update those. [*]
2-3 years ago, I've head a discussion with the chief editor of one of
the IEEE journals on the style used in that journal. He actually
agreed to the fact that some provisions were not the most efficient.
IIRC, he even agreed to change some that were not dictated by the
IEEE style, but said he couldn't change those that are "inherited"
from the umbrella IEEE style.
========== [*] One vivid example is the "illogical" quotation marks:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2011/05/the_rise_of_logical_punctuation.html
Whose period is it? Does it belong to the person being quoted or does
it belong to the person doing the quoting?
If the quoted text ends with a period, the period goes inside the
quotation marks; if it doesn't, the period goes outside.
--
Science - Questions we may never find answers for.
Religion - Answers we must never question.
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