A 12:34 2001-11-29 -0500, DougEwell2@cs.com a écrit :
>Sorry about the previous message. I hit "Send Now" by accident while trying
>to select some text.
>
>In a message dated 2001-11-29 8:58:42 Pacific Standard Time, tiro@tiro.com
>writes:
>
> > This in turn led to the myth that the French do not use
> > uppercase accented letters...
> >
> > Please spread the word. My French colleagues are frustrated and embarassed
> > by the continued propagation of this unfortunate myth.
>
>Unfortunately, I have seen this myth written in some relatively authoritative
>sources, including some from France. For my part I am glad that it is not
>true, as it created yet one more annoying difference between French French
>vs. Canadian French that did not have to exist.
[Alain] French has the same history on both sides of the Atlantic (it is a
normalized language and we all recognize it among francophones). That said,
it is true that there has always been a usage for unaccented uppercase
initials of sentences (or proper names), on both sides of the Atlantic
indeed, and for consistent accentuation, regardless of case.
And the typographic convention of both usages always coinhabited
(depending on the competence of typographists and their school of
thought)... The sad habit not to use accents on capitals, however, has
been reinforced since the appearance of accents in French at the
Renaissance by 3 factors:
-stone carvers did not want to scrap their job with those minute inovations;
-in the XIX th Century and up to the second part of the XXth Century,
mechanical typerwiters had problems with the dual placement of accents on
lowercase/capital and hence it was technically resolved to ignore the
problem and not provide a way to put them on capitals, more rarely used, in
any way, than lowercase (which is certainly more true than in German);
-because of the embarrassment caused by the latter, teachers have taugh (on
both sides of the Atlantic) in the XXth Century, that one should not put
accents on capitals.
In the meanwhile good typography practice, consistence in data processing,
and pure logic, call for the giving up the bad practice of having a
different spelling in upper and lower case. Furthermore, to those who
observe well, all the headings of dictionary entries only use capital
letters, typically, in the main French dictionaries (now without accents,
those words would not be good French spelling and dictionaries are there
for this reason, among others).
Ask your "relatively authoritative sources" if they ever opened a Larousse
or Robert dictionary. If they answer yes, ask them what they observe... (;
Alain LaBonté
Québec
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