I sent an e-mail to somebody in the office this morning that had to do with some logging statements in our software, and I wasn't quite sure how to handle commas and such around the quotation marks. Generally if you're quoting something or somebody, you handle it like this:
Sue said, "We don't have to go to work on Tuesday," paused for a moment, then finished, "so I'm thinking that might be a good time to get a few things done around the house."
When you're simply citing a phrase or term or something though, it's often more like this:
The phrase "to kill two birds with one stone" refers to achieving two goals with only one line of effort.
That being said, take VB.NET source code that looks like this:
Select Case someVariable
Case 1
Log("Unable to make appointment - Houses In Use On That Day")
DoSomething1("Unable to make appointment - Houses In Use On That Day.")
'Notice the period in the second line; this is the only difference.
Case 2
Log("Unable to make appointment - Houses In Use On That Day")
DoSomething2("Unable to make appointment - Something Came Up At The Last Minute.")
.
.
.
End Select
How then should the following e-mail be punctuated, captialized, and such? If it weren't simply using phrases where every word was already capitalized in the logs, what kind of impact would that have on capitalization? We're basically using Southeastern American English in intra-office e-mails:
For 1, it’s logging, “Houses In Use On That Day,” but for 2, it’s logging a mixture of that and, “Something Came Up At The Last Minute.”
