From: Jukka K. Korpela (jkorpela@cs.tut.fi)
Date: Wed May 24 2006 - 05:08:23 CDT
On Wed, 24 May 2006, Otto Stolz wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
>> I have never seen any norm or recommendation on it for any language.
>
> For German, it is in §95 of the official orthographic rules,
> <http://www.ids-mannheim.de/reform/regeln2006.pdf>.
I'm afraid I wrote unclearly, leaving too much room for interpretation of
what "it" referred to. (Pronouns considered harmful.)
What I meant to refer to was rules on deeply nested quotations, i.e.
quotations containing quotations containing quotations, and perhaps
with even deeper nesting (with all quotations expressed using quotation
marks).
The rule that you cite, as almost all rules on quotation marks that I have
seen, discuss simple nesting only: "Steht in einem Text mit
Anführungszeichen etwas ebenfalls Angeführtes, so kennzeichnet man dies
durch die so genannten halben Anführungszeichen." There are two example
sentences, both with simple nesting only.
As I mentioned, even the rules for simply nested quotations are probably
hard to find for most languages. For deeper nesting, I'm pretty sure that
most language and typography authorities or specialists simply never
thought about it. Would it be appropriate to force a decision on this? In
fact, the CLDR _structure_ now mandates a particular rule, namely the
alternation principle.
So I think "alternate quotation marks" data should be replaced by "inner
quotation marks" data. Since data on quotation marks needs to be carefully
checked and corrected anyway, this would be the right moment for a change.
That would make it reasonably sure that people who decide on the data for
a locale, as well implementors and other people who use the data, have
the same idea of what these settings _mean_.
As regards to alternation in style such as curly quotation marks vs.
guillements in some languages, it would best be left out at present,
taking just the one that is recommended for general use in
computer-generated texts. Actually, such alternatives could be implemented
as features in "minor locales", selectable by the user after choosing a
language locale and perhaps a country locale.
-- Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
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