Talk:Quotation mark/Archive 2

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Quotes in Portugese

I have Portuguese as my first language and I have absolutely no idea of why the "«?»" signs are listed on that table as default for Portuguese. Those marks are never used on this language (believe me, I know). I would've promptly corrected that, but I'm not sure anymore. If this is indeed wrong, the info for other languages on that table might be wrong as well. If anyone knows what this is all about, it'd be nice to have some input (or have the article fixed, if that's the case). Mackeriv 14:30, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The table is based upon [1], which cites two German books from 1970 and 1986 as sources. Any of these as well as my conversion could of course have flaws or be outdated. Corrections, if based on facts, are of course always welcome. Crissov 19:23, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

The Hungarian one is switched too, so these infos are a "bit" misleading. --Szajd 20:13, 2004 May 9 (UTC)

Several of those entries seem mistaken. The references on which that information was taken from could be indeed reliable, but they don't reflect the reality of those languages. Perhaps that's the way of the correct grammar, but that's not how people use it. I feel that the double/single quotes are the most famous use of the quotation marks worldwide (at least today). – Mackeriv 02:25, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

The problem seems to be correcting itself, however, as more people update the quatation marks for the language they're familiar with. I changed the Italian one, for instance, and Chinese, Japanese and Hungarian all seem to have recently been updated. --Asbestos 14:47, 8 June 2004 (UTC)

I'm going to switch the Turkish one, as I've never saw "«…»" used in a Turkish text in my life. MonsterOfTheLake 16:57, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Actually, going back to the Portuguese point (since this section is titled ‘Quotes in Portugese [sic]’ after all), using « and » is quite common in many materials (not only published, but also on the web) in Portugal, and I myself have seen them quite a number of times. Since Mackeriv is Brazilian, that might account for his not knowing that, since such marks are indeed never used in Brazil. Psi-Lord 06:55, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Since this is the English Wikipedia and for ease of reading, I believe this article should be split into "Quotation mark, English language" and "Quotation mark, other languages". Abtract 15:39, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

03, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)

And the rendering bug in Safari also affects the Japanese/Chinese quotes, shifting the line slightly up. It's not as noticeable, since it doesn't cut into the table border. It doesn't seem to affect it in Firefox, because the row is tall enough anyway. --Elektron 07:07, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)

Update: Apparently, this is correct behaviour, so it's not going to change. However, the problem is still with the stylesheet specifying "line-height: 1.5em" (the CSS spec states that this is to be calculated into absolute values, e.g. pixels, and that will be inherited). If, instead, you specify "line-height: 1.5", things work properly. Of course, since it's a <TH>, we could just add TH { line-height: normal} to the stylesheet (or then the height of the table cell would be too big). --Elektron 03:09, 2004 Jun 16 (UTC)

As a Portuguese speaker, I'd like to point out some information about the quotation marks in Portuguese. The quotation marks in Portuguese are: «double» (Unicode 00AB and 00BB) and ‹single› (Unicode 2039 and 203A). This is at least what my sources at home specify: Bergström, Magnus, & Neves Reis 2004. Prontuário Ortográfico e Guia da Língua Portuguesa. Editorial Notícias, Lisboa; Almeida Costa, J., & A. Sampaio e Melo 1999. Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa. Porto Editora, Porto; Cunha, Celso, & Lindley Cintra 1985. Breve Gramática do Português Contemporâneo. Sá da Costa, Lisboa. What is also significative is that the quotes in portuguese are also known as “vírgulas dobradas” (folded commas). The fact that the word “folded” is used implies that the quotation marks are straight and not curved. However, it's increasing in Portugal the use of the quotation marks as in English: “double” (Unicode 201C and 201D) and ‘single’ (Unicode 2018 and 2019). Check the different usage made by these following internet sites: Ciberdúvidas da Língua Portuguesa (http://ciberduvidas.sapo.pt/); Público (http://www.publico.clix.pt/); A Bola (http://www.abola.pt/); Jornal de Notícias (http://jn.sapo.pt/). Bear in mind, however, that the rules I mentioned above apply to Portuguese spoken in Portugal and in the Portuguese speaking African countries. I don't know anything about the Brazilian rules. 82.154.133.235 13:33, 13 January 2007 (UTC) C. A. Duarte

Please make a suitable edit with citations on the main article page. Be bold :)Abtract 21:12, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

~

To be honest I am Portuguese and I seldom see the use of «» these days. Most people in Portugal use "" . —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.180.72.153 (talk) 20:47, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Quotation dash in Spanish

Hello, I am Spanish, and I find the quotation dash section incomplete: in Spanish, particulary in books, dialogue is always indicated with dashes. If some text in the paragraph is not part of the dialogue it is 'escaped' with dashes, as indicated in Polish, but the punctuation and spacing is different:

―¡Oh, cielos! ―exclamó Levin―. Creo que hace ya nueve años...

―Eres bueno ―señaló Oblonsky, riendo―. Y tú me llamas...

―Estoy aburrida ―dijo ella.

The 'escape' dashes work some like parenthesis, and has the same punctuation rules: space outside, no space inside and punctuations outside. But if the non dialogue text ends de paragraph then there is not ending dash.

Maybe someone car rewrite this, since my English is not as good as it should be :-(

--195.16.143.65 11:24, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In many Spanish books the qutoation dash (“raya”) comes in two typographical variants, although the official names for them I’m not sure ... Anyways, the above could be written like this:

—¡Oh, cielos! –exclamó Levin–. Creo que hace ya nueve años...

—Eres bueno –señaló Oblonsky, riendo–. Y tú me llamas...

—Estoy aburrida —dijo ella.

I’ll review the books I have to see the exact use on it, although since no native speaker has ever given me clear rules on the rules for quotation marks in Spanish (the difference between «», “”, ‘’, —, – since I've seen all used without consistency), I can’t guarantee RAE-level of authority in what I find. Matthew Stuckwisch 17:10, 25 September 2005 (CST)

Table of Quotes

The footnote "3. In Switzerland the same quote signs are used for all languages: French, German, Italian" under the table of international quotation marks doesn't appear to make any sense. What does it mean? --Asbestos 2004 31 Oct

Actually there are not just three but four national languages in Switzerland and all use '«ch»', despite differing habits in other countries (« fr », »de«, „de“, “it”). Feel free to rephrase. Crissov 23:35, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The table seems to be influenced by English language, rather than punctuational logic. There shouldn't be any "Double" and "Single" columns, only "Standard" and "Alternative". Double quotes are standard for English and single quotes are the alternative quotation marks. While for other languages the notion of single vs double quotation marks never comes into play and just makes no sense. Though perhaps an extra column would be needed for comments on languages that don't fall into, or exceed the standard/alternative quotation pattern. --Delicates 08:07, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'll suggest using "outer quote" and "inner quote" instead. Or even more labels, all languages might not have anything to put under a specific label, and the table will be wider, but clearer. --fbjon ^^ 4649 12:51, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Good suggestion. I'll change it to "outer" and "inner" right now. That will be far more useful than "double" and "single". Unfortunately, I don't know which languages are "double" on the outside, and which are "single" on the outside. I hope someone else can fix that up later. --DavidCary 21:39, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Footnote 1 does state for English "In longer quotes the leading quotation mark is repeated in front of each line". This should refer to paragraphs instead of lines, shouldn't it? -- 24 Apr 2005

yes --Taejo 18:24, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

In Afrikaans: the "standard" is to use baseline doubles to open and high to close (both point the same direction as English close quotes). However, I have not seen anyone do this in many years (I learnt that system in 5th grade, and our readers then used it, but since then only in old books). Today, high english-style quotes are by far more common (probably in part because we use US keyboards in South Africa). --Taejo 18:24, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

-- I dare not edit that table, so if anyone feels up to it you can add Faroese. It uses the same quotation marks as Icelandic. Double curly quotes and single curly quotes inside. Historically, and as an alternative, inwards double and single angle quotes, as in Danish, have been and can be used. | -SMO- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.25.184.131 (talk) 05:38, 7 August 2008 (UTC)