At 02:16 11/29/2001, J M Sykes wrote:
>1. Is the assumption that the French do not accent capitals
> correct? I'm sure I've seen them accented, though I couldn't
> possibly say this was consistent. If they're not accented,
> this implies that round trip case folding loses information.
> I note that this is indeed the case with MS Word97, in
> Standard French, though Belgian, Canadian, Luxembourg and
> Swiss French all fold to accented capitals!
No, this assumption is not correct. French typewriters could not type
accents over uppercase letters, and so this led to a period in which many
people became used to seeing documents in which there were no uppercase
accented letters. This in turn led to the myth that the French do not use
uppercase accented letters, a myth unfortunately propagated by a generation
of French bureaucrats who appear only to have read typed documents and
never a book. If you examine the books of the major French publishers, and
particularly the publications of the Imprimerie National, which has set the
norm for French typography for more than 400 years, you will see that the
French do indeed use accented uppercase letters.
Please spread the word. My French colleagues are frustrated and embarassed
by the continued propagation of this unfortunate myth.
John Hudson
Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com
... es ist ein unwiederbringliches Bild der Vergangenheit,
das mit jeder Gegenwart zu verschwinden droht, die sich
nicht in ihm gemeint erkannte.
... every image of the past that is not recognized by the
present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear
irretrievably.
Walter Benjamin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Thu Nov 29 2001 - 13:16:37 EST