Grammatical Conundrum: ." or ". or .".

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Soldato
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As a logical person I like things to follow rules and be procedural. Language doesn't always do this but it does have wrong and right ways of doing things which makes up for its illogical starting point. However the following issue seems to be open ended.

All three of these are to be considered the same sentence with the same meaning and all acceptable ways of writing it down.

Jack said, "I hate Firefox; Chrome is better."

Jack said, "I hate Firefox; Chrome is better".

Jack said, "I hate Firefox; Chrome is better.".

All are correct and there is no solid answer to this, only conventions which differ in different countries. I don't mind geographical differences when it comes to spelling, however I do think the grammatical syntax should remain the same.

Now in my mind, 1 means Jack finished speaking his sentence but the full sentence isn't necessarily finished. 2 says the main sentence is finished but Jack was perhaps interrupted rather than coming to the end of what he was saying. 3 makes most sense, it is clear both sentences are complete.

Why isn't something being done about this? Why isn't whichever society in charge of language writing an article on this and confirming their stance?
 
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Jack said, "I hate Firefox; Chrome is better."

Comma after "said". Terminating period before double quotes. Semicolon after "Firefox".
 
Dot at the end of sentence. Not at the end of a statement.

Unless you're after: Jack said "I hate Firefox, Chrome is better dot".

edit: It's possible it's the first, English grammar is not particularly consistent.
 
First one. I was taught that the punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks, and if it doesn't need one then you should put a comma there anyway?
 
I guess because it alters the way you might read it aloud?

"Jack said 'I'm useless.'" might be read as

"Jack said I'm useless."

"Jack said, 'I'm useless.'" would probably be read aloud as

"Jack said, <jack's voice>I'm useless."

Clearly a different meaning with the pause, and change in reading voice.
 
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FoxEye said:
I guess because it alters the way you might read it aloud?

"Jack said 'I'm useless.'" might be read as

"Jack said I'm useless."

"Jack said, 'I'm useless.'" would probably be read aloud as

"Jack said, I'm useless."

Clearly a different meaning with the pause, and change in reading voice.
Click to expand...

Correction:

Jack said, "I'm useless."
 
FoxEye said:
It's not a correction if you're agreeing with me :p
Click to expand...

He's agreeing with you but correcting the odd way you decided to punctuate your examples. :p

But yeah , first one. The one that annoys me at the moment is when people use a comma and put a space either side of it for some reason.
 
Maccy said:
First one. And technically a comma after 'said' as others have mentioned.
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Not sure I agree with the comma after said, I don't think the sentence requires the break, it should just flow straight through.

With regards to the positioning of the full stop I'd probably put it inside or outside the quotations depending on whether or not the original sentence ended at that point.
 
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