I feel like such a good person. I just completed my first iTunes Music Store purchase. It went down flawlessly, and I’m currently enjoying my well-spent $2.00. Audio delights purchased: Kenny Rogers: “Lucille”; New Order: “Ceremony”.
I agonized over that trailing period in the last paragraph for about ten seconds, but I’m convinced it is the correct grammatical move, given my limited perusal of the various style guides at my disposal. Sheesh! The writing chops are indeed quite rusty. Correct punctuation used to be automatic for me, like a reflex.
Returning to the topic at hand, I just adore the fact that I needed those two songs, fired up iTunes, did a clicky-clicky, and had them playing before I could have even put on my shoes to go to Wuxtry and see if they had a cheap used CD or rekkid with either of those songs. Of course, the larger implication is that I may never leave my house again, but in the short term, I’m burning a CD for my friend right now, who was jonesin’ to hear him some “Lucille.”
UPDATE: some people expressed concern that I was “missing the point” by burning a CD “for my friend.” Let me just explain that, even if I did that, I wouldn’t consider it too huge of an offense because, quite frankly, that’s part of life. Compliation tapes were around long before burning downloaded songs to CDs came around, and they didn’t kill music as the “Industry” proclaimed so loudly would happen in bold warnings featuring a cassette with crossed bones below it to look like the sign for “poison.” But futhermore, the friend in question is coming over to my house to brew beer this afternoon, and I wanted us to be able to listen to the song. My stereo can play MP3 files via my network, but the network media player I use does not support iTunes files. I’m not a big enough nerd to have a computer in my living room (yet), so I have to burn a CD of AAC-formatted files to listen to them downstairs via the magic of “lasers” and “compact disc digital audio.”
UPDATE TWO: Just purchased another: Beck “Bottle of Blues”.
By the way, has anyone seen this totally brilliant sidewalk chalk art from London?
9 responses so far ↓
1 Robert Occhialini // Jan 30, 2004 at 10:28 am
I think that making a CD for your friend constitutes fair use.
2 Anonymous // Jan 30, 2004 at 7:57 pm
I think that the trailing period after quotations or parentheses is in quite a bit of flux recently.
When I was in school, it was a no brainer: you put the period inside the quote mark, no matter what; the aetshetics trumped the logic. Nowadays, it is generally acceptable to go either way.
Personally, I went with the logical solution (the period outside the quoted last word or phrase of a sentence), before I realized that the accepted style was changing, and I commend your decision, as will automated parsers everywhere in the future.
3 Chris // Feb 1, 2004 at 10:06 am
Welcome to iTunes. It starts out like you describe: you buy just a couple songs. But fear not, before long, you’ll have joined the “100 song club.”
Fearfully, I’m closing on the 200 song mark myself. Though, a lot of that was damage done stocking up on holiday music (of which, they had some fun stuff!).
4 nic // Feb 1, 2004 at 10:05 pm
Oddly enough, we were having this very debate at work last week. I am still a period inside the quotes purist, myself. No doubt a character flaw on my part.
5 Elliott // Feb 2, 2004 at 4:37 pm
I don’t know, Nic. As a writer, and a writer informed by programming computers, I balk at nesting my structures: if the sentence opened before the quotation, I recon, the quotation must close before the sentence ends. I like the reasoning.
On the other hand, as a reader, I realize that the punctuation regulates the flow of the words, while the quotations indicate a source for those words. Logically, the structures are entirely independent, and not in danger of crossing one another up. The punctuation, it seems, has more relevance to the place of the word in the sentence than does the quotation mark, and should consequently be closest to the closing letter of the word.
Finally, being a stickler about opening and closing structures in writing leads to a mess like this:
Her words were as authoritative as they were remarkable: “This is an important statement.”.
No one wants all that stopping, do they? In fact, I think it may be easier to read with the punctuation marks inside the quotation marks and parenthesis, and not just because it is, or was, the standard style.
6 nic // Feb 3, 2004 at 5:55 am
Is it too telling to bring up grammar and education as class markers?
7 dude // Feb 3, 2004 at 9:43 am
New Order’s “Ceremony” is an exceelent track but, I must say, it is one of the few tracks where a cover is better than the original. Try finding the Galaxie 500 version. It will blow you away.
8 Anonymous // Feb 3, 2004 at 7:13 pm
Are you telling me you’re a snob, or are you telling me I’m a slob?
9 Bucky Winnafresh // Jul 22, 2007 at 6:29 pm
i tunes rules
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