<q> and language-specific quotation marks

[Jools]

Re: what about &lt;blockquote& gt; ? (was &lt;q&gt; and language-specific quotation marks)

Stan Brown wrote:[color=blue]
> In article <MPG.19fd0d7e26 07d5c98b5d4@new s.odyssey.net> in
> comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html, I wrote:[color=green]
>> If by "long quotations" you mean quotations that are long enough to
>> be presented in a separate paragraph, with wider margins than normal
>> body text, then standard practice is to present them _without_
>> quotes.[/color]
>
> Sorry -- I meant to say "standard American practice". At least I did
> remember to say:
>[color=green]
>> British practice may vary; I don't know.[/color][/color]

There are various methods that people use. At my university (Leeds, UK) we
were expected to use the 'Harvard Method' which used the practices you
described. Other institutions may differ in their interpretation

[Stan Brown]

Re: what about &lt;blockquote& gt; ? (was &lt;q&gt; and language-specific quotation marks)

In article
<qnIkb.203318$k o%.182767@news0 4.bloor.is.net. cable.rogers.co m> in
comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.html, Jonathan Snook
<goto_www.snook .ca@snook.ca> wrote:[color=blue]
>"Stan Brown" <the_stan_brown @fastmail.fm> wrote in message[color=green]
>> Short quotations: in line, with " marks.
>> Long quotations: separate indented paragraphs, without " marks.[/color]
>
>I've often seen this style of quotation (especially in newspaper or magazine
>articles):
>---
>"There was a great paragraph full of text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,[/color]
....[color=blue]
>lectus dolor semper lacus, eu consequat metus sem in arcu. It was great
>indeed.
>
>"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Because it was a
>paragraph, I loved it so."
>---
>How should this text be marked up?[/color]

You'll see that in newspapers and magazines because the columns are
already very narrow. Cutting several ems off the column width would
make it nearly impossible to justify the text.

Yes, the quotes are correct when the "block quote" is not indented.
There is a quote at the start of every quoted paragraph and one at
the end of _only_ the last quoted paragraph.

But this style is a substitute for the standard way. Books and Web
pages usually have plenty of ems for a comfortable column width, and
therefore have room and to spare for the indention.

So, since you ask, I would mark this up as
<blockquote><p> There was a great ... indeed.</p>
<p>Lorem ipsum ... I loved it so.</p></blockquote>

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA

http://OakRoadSystems.com/

HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
2.1 changes: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/changes.html
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: what about &lt;blockquote& gt; ? (was &lt;q&gt; and language-specific quotation marks)

John Dunlop <john+usenet@jo hndunlop.info> wrote:
[color=blue]
> I'm under the impression, and it seems you are too,
> that most style guides suggest quotation marks oughtn't to be used
> around quotations that are set-off from the text [1]. Period.[/color]

That's correct, but when _are_ the quotations set-off from the text?
In HTML authoring for the WWW, we can pretty much say that we never
know whether they are.

I have to major points here:
(1) blockquote elements aren't always indented
(2) indentation is not an unambiguous indication of quotation.

For (1), the simplest (and probably most important) example is speech
browsers. For (2), just consider the widespread abuse of <blockquote>
for mere indentation of something that's not quoted at all but e.g.
just emphasized or (!) de-emphasized text.

As I explain in some detail at

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/bq.html

I don't think quotation marks are the solution (for blockquote),
though. Rather, _words_ should be used so that it is apparent from the
text _as read aloud_ that there is a quotation in it and where it
begins and ends. It takes some creativity at times to write such things
in a manner that looks natural in visual presentation, but it can be
done.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

[Vincent]

Re: what about &lt;blockquote& gt; ? (was &lt;q&gt; and language-specific quotationmarks)

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:[color=blue]
>
> As I explain in some detail at
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/bq.html
> I don't think quotation marks are the solution (for blockquote),
> though. Rather, _words_ should be used so that it is apparent from the
> text _as read aloud_ that there is a quotation in it and where it
> begins and ends. It takes some creativity at times to write such things
> in a manner that looks natural in visual presentation, but it can be
> done.
>[/color]
I do agree with you that we should clearly introduce the quotation with
words to make it obvious to visual UAs *and* speech browsers, but this
should not prevent us from using good typography style, i.e. using
quotation marks if necessary (and if possible).

Well, as I said before, it just appears in this case that they are not
necessary anyway :-) Typography rules are looser than I thought in this
specific area (at least in French, I don't know enough about English and
other languages).

--
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