“State” (with a capital “S”) refers to one of the United States, and “States” refers to two or more of them. “State” and “States,” thus used, are proper nouns because they refer to a unique entity or entities: one or more of the United States, the union of which, under the terms and conditions stated in the Constitution, is the raison d’être for the nation. I reserve the uncapitalized word “state” for a government, or hierarchy of them, which exerts a monopoly of force within its boundaries.
Marriage, in the Western tradition, predates the state and legitimates the union of one man and one woman. As such, it is an institution that is vital to civil society and therefore to the enjoyment of liberty. The recognition of a more-or-less permanent homosexual pairing as a kind of marriage is both ill-advised and illegitimate. Such an arrangement is therefore a “marriage” (in quotation marks) or, more accurately, a homosexual cohabitation contract (HCC).
The words “liberal”, “progressive”, and their variants are usually enclosed in quotation marks (sneer quotes) because they refer to persons and movements whose statist policies are, in fact, destructive of liberty and progress. I sometimes italicize the words, just to reduce visual clutter.
I have reverted to the British style of punctuating in-line quotations, which I followed 40 years ago when I published a weekly newspaper. The British style is to enclose within quotation marks only (a) the punctuation that appears in quoted text or (b) the title of a work (e.g., a blog post) that is usually placed within quotation marks.
I have reverted because of the confusion and unsightliness caused by the American style. It calls for the placement of periods and commas within quotation marks, even if the periods and commas don’t occur in the quoted material or title. Also, if there is a question mark at the end of quoted material, it replaces the comma or period that might otherwise be placed there.
If I had continued to follow American style, I would have ended a sentence in a recent post with this:
… “A New (Cold) Civil War or Secession?” “The Culture War,” “Polarization and De-facto Partition,” and “Civil War?“
What a hodge-podge. There’s no comma between the first two entries, and the sentence ends with an inappropriate question mark. With two titles ending in question marks, there was no way for me to avoid a series in which a comma is lacking. I could have avoided the sentence-ending question mark by recasting the list, but the items are listed chronologically, which is how they should be read.
I solved these problems easily by reverting to the British style:
… “A New (Cold) Civil War or Secession?”, “The Culture War“, “Polarization and De-facto Partition“, and “Civil War?“.
This not only eliminates the hodge-podge, but is also more logical and accurate. All items are separated by commas, commas aren’t displaced by question marks, and the declarative sentence ends with a period instead of a question mark.
For much more see “Writing: A Guide“.
Politics and Prosperity 
I typically read your blog once a week via a recurring email that contains your blog posts. Unless I want to comment I don’t visit your blog. That might be contributing to lower readership.
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Thanks for the comment. I have acquired a bunch of e-mail followers, so that probably helps to explain the drop in visits.
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When it comes to the topic of politics, I think that the rise of popular YouTube commentators (such as Ben Shapiro) also draws a lot of attention away from blogs, particularly among younger audiences.
Before I began blogging, I scoured the Internet for advice on drawing traffic and the advice was generally the same (given the average person’s attention span) – include images or videos to break up long text passages, and keep posts under 800 words in length. I’ve noticed various bloggers break those rules and enjoy a large following though.
Regarding topics, some variety is fine, though I keep seeing unanimity that there should be thematic consistency. When blogging for professional reasons as I’d been (trying to draw employers and work opportunities), the advice was more strict – don’t ever stray from your topic just so that people can easily see what you’re about. Blogs kept for non-professional reasons have more leeway.
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I may have found the main reason for the drop. The number of visitors to “Intelligence, Personality, Politics, and Happiness” seems to have dropped a lot in recent months. I discovered it only after moving the post to a new blog, Realities, where I’m posting polished versions of old Politics & Prosperity posts. It’s a way of trying to find a new audience for items that (I believe) are still worth reading, but which don’t get a lot of traffic at P&P.
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