Can you tell I'm on a conference call not requiring much attention from me? Three posts in one day? Must be terribly obvious.
I know I learned the proper quoting, italicizing, bolding, and underlining rules for the various titles (movie, book, short story, article, etc.) in high school, but I've since forgotten them. And ya know what? I don't care. They're fucking stupid rules. All you ever need is a visual way to distinguish the full name from the surrounding text, so pick one of the four methods. Or invent your own, such as ***Asterisks*** or @#%&Swearing&%#@.
I also don't like the rules where some punctuation is inserted inside a quoted phrase, even if that punctuation isn't part of the quote itself. "It's a stupid rule," Mary exclaimed. I routinely and purposefully break that rule, especially concerning moving a sentence-ending period inside the final quote. If you've worked in computers, especially programming for any length of time, you've needed to communicate something so precisely that using proper grammar would have created confusion:
The wireless passphrase is "Jump0ff@cliFF." Except, don't type that period.
Imagine the confusion when you really do need them to type an ending period as part of some literal string. Most people omit it because of their grammar education. Because of a bad rule, confusion ensues.
I feel liberated when I purposefully break grammar rules for good reason. Similar to learning all the "rules" of playing Jazz music, then finding out that the next step in your skill progression is breaking those rules. I believe I'm improving the English language with my modifications, making it clearer and more precise. I don't think I'm quite ready for Mark Twain's (or it might be a work by M. J. Shields) A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling yet though.
If there are any grammar "errors" in this piece besides the ones I described, they're intentional as well. Scout's honor.
Dr. Cognard would be disgusted with my comma splice these days, you know she would.