Re: [ARSCLIST] quotation marks in lists?

["Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Trey Bunn" <treybunn2@xxxxxxxxx>
> Here's an odd one for you.
> I've completed a finding aid at the archives where I work, and it
> references 24 reel tapes of field recordings of fiddler players.  For
> each tape, I've done a track listing, a small excerpt of which looks
> like this:
> 
> 1. Little Lucy
> 2. Gathering Flowers from the Hillside
> 3. Allgood Special
> 
> ...and so on.  However, my supervisor wants me to redo the track
> listings with quotation marks around the song titles.  I can't recall
> ever seeing a track listing done with quotation marks, and this just
> seems wrong.
> 
> 1. "Little Lucy"
> 2. "Gathering Flowers from the Hillside"
> 3. "Allgood Special"
> 
> I don't have my Little Brown Handbook handy, but I've usually got very
> good grammar instincts, and that list just looks wrong to me.  I know
> some of you have worked on discographies before, so I thought I'd
> check for some opinions on the listserv.  Of course, it could just be
> company policy where I work to do finding aids like this, that is,
> with awkward-looking quotation marks on song titles, but it might have
> been helpful had I been told that thirteen pages ago.
> 
> Anyway, any thoughts?
> 
1) Technically, since the listed items are musical titles, your supervisor
is grammatically correct!

2) It also makes it easier to import the list(s) as text-based data files,
since quotes are commonly used to define and separate data fields.

Thus, for example, if I note in an e-mail message: "I'm discussing here my
composition, 'Money Talks'..." (the title here is in single quotes, because
my quote of the theoritical message is in double quotes...in normal messages,
the title of my tune, "Money Talks" will be in double quotes, and have all
the words, except "a," "an," "the" or "and," capitalized...!

Steven C. Barr