Tuesday 7 August 2012

Quotation mark

Quo·ta·tion marks [kʰwɔʊ̯ˈtʰɛɪ̯ʃən mɑːk] are a set of symbols surrounding a quote. Their shapes vary from language to language. First there are the inverted commas, which can be either single or double, and either dumb or smart.
Single, Double; "Dumb", Smart
Dumb quotes look the same on either side, and this was the only way to do it with a typewriter. But smart quotes (or typographic quotes) look different, depending on whether they are opening (or beginning) the quote or closing (ending) it. And these different quotes also have language-specific forms. English, for example, uses 6-shaped opening quotes and 9-shaped closing quotes:
English
In German these are opposite and the opening quotes are low, resembling commas.
Deutsch
And then there is the Swedish way...
Svenska
Pretty dumb, if you ask this author. But wait it gets worse. Read on to see what Finnish does.

Guil·le·mets [ˈɡɪləmɛt] or [ɡiːəˈmeɪ] (named after the French punch cutter Guillaume Le Bé) are little angles enclosing the quote, and they can also be single and double.
Single, «Double»
These are used in French, with the addition of ¼-em non-break spaces.
« Français »
 Those spaces are just a French thing though, as other languages seem to do fine without them.
«Italiano»
 Now, these also change in some languages like Danish, where they are opposite:
»Dansk«
Now that's some neat quotes right there! They point you right where the action is. Oh, here comes Finnish...
»Suomi»
 Why, Finnish, why? How am I supposed to know whether the quote is beginning or ending? Also, the guillemets seem to be pointing right through the quoted text, as if saying: “Nope, nothing important here. Just read on over there.”

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