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Argh, stop making this about "better" or "worse" folks, just state the facts: Typesetters's quotation is ambiguous about punctuation, logical isn't. Period. End of story. Move on.
If anyone can show that LQ prevents ambiguity where AQ and BQ do not, please show us on the talk page. Until then, AQ and BQ are also i and s, but LQ certainly is too.
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{{FAQ row
{{FAQ row
|q=Why does the Manual of Style call for the use of logical quotation?
|q=Why does the Manual of Style call for the use of logical quotation?
|a=Many Wikipedians find that the intuitiveness and simplicity of [[Logical quotation|this system]] makes it a better choice for Wikipedia than either American or British standards.
|a=[[Logical quotation|This system]] preserves the quoted text without punctuation-related ambiguity.
}}
}}



Revision as of 14:52, 16 January 2010

Wikipedia's Manual of Style sometimes has conventions that differ from other well-known style manuals and from what is often taught in schools. These differences are usually deliberate. Wikipedia's editors have discussed them in great detail and have reached consensus that these conventions serve our purposes better than those of other style manuals. New contributors are advised to check the FAQ and the archives to see if their concern has already been discussed.

To view an explanation to the answer, click the [show] link to the right of the question.

Why does the Manual of Style forbid the use of curly or typographic quotes and apostrophes (the characters , , , and )?
Readers may only know how to type in straight quotes (such as " and ') when searching for text within a page, and Web browsers do not currently find curly quotes when users type straight quotes.
Why does the Manual of Style call for the use of logical quotation?
Many Wikipedians find that the intuitiveness and simplicity of this system makes it a better choice for Wikipedia than either American or British standards.
Why does the Manual of Style distinguish between hyphens (-), en dashes (), em dashes (), and minus signs ()?
Using different glyphs for different purposes improves readability. Using hyphens everywhere would make certain constructions ambiguous (for example, an em dash meant to set off a short bit of text from the surrounding text could be confused with a compound adjective) or illegible (for example, a minus sign in a superscript is legible, but some fonts render hyphens so small that they become hard to read).