Quotation mark

The quotation marks are Signe S typographical of Ponctuation. Their principal use is to put forward an expression, a term or a quotation. The term would come from a printer, Guillaume.

Various forms of quotation marks

There exist various quotation marks: one initially distinguishes the quotation mark opening from the closing quotation mark because this typographical sign is used only per symmetrical pairs, with the manner of the Parenthèse S or the hooks. Their form varies according to the typographical steps:

typographical quotation marks (or French ), in form of overlapping rafters: “ (opening) and ” (closing);
English quotation marks: “ (opening) and ” (closing);
German quotation marks: „ (opening) and “ (closing)

right quotation marks " (without symmetry):

It is in the latter case a symbol of the guillemetage which exists only in Dactylographie: a Word processing, for example, will replace them, according to the language of the text, by the desired quotation marks. They get busy however such as they are in data-processing Programmation, as well as the apostrophizes right, acute accent and grave accent, which are however not according to the standard unicode designed to be used like quotation marks. These symbols are initially and respectively those of the second and the minute of arc (for example: 30° 1 ' 37" for a measurement of angle). One also finds them as a unit of distance, indicating the inch S (example: 17"), frequently in the Data-processing material (reader of Diskette, Diagonal bay, of a monitor…).

Use of the quotation marks

In French

On the historical level, it is interesting to note that the quotation marks initially were - with the Moyen-âge, and mainly as from the 12th century - commas (of Latin virgula , small rod) intended to frame a word of orthography or direction doubtful, to announce to the reader a term to be corrected (one “corrected” also the poor pupils with rods). In the modern typographical use, the quotation marks were essential only in competition with the italics and the indent of dialog, in particular in the impression of the plays of Diderot (the history of the forms of the quotation and the reported speech is the object of a recent article of the review grammatical Information , n° 102 (June 2004) per Doris da Cunha and Marc Arabyan).

Quotation

In French, one employs the typographical or French quotation marks (“”), separated from the expression which they put forward by a indivisible space. According to certain typographers, the English quotation marks can be employed like quotation marks of second level and, in third level, one can use apostrophes, whereas, for others, the use of overlapping French quotation marks does not pose any problem - and, in these two cases, the English quotation marks and apostrophes are directly coupled with the expression. However in third level, the use of the Italique is preferable.

First method: “The usherette said to me: “Give me your ticket.” I gave it to him. ”
Second method: “The usherette said to me: “Give me your ticket. ” I gave it to him. ”

Let us note that the English quotation marks are disadvised by the HMSO; in addition, if the quotation is on several paragraphs, an opening quotation mark is placed at each Alinéa, even at each beginning of line in the case of a quotation of second level. Let us note finally that in the rules of the HMSO, a quotation of first rank can be simply put in italics and without quotation marks (the quotations of second level use quotation marks systematically, but one does not repeat them at the beginning of line in this case), but this solution is to be prevented if it contains many words themselves in italics (foreign languages; they would then be composed as a Roman).

In any event, it is imperative not to put a French quotation of first level between quotation marks and in italic. The formula: “This is a quotation” is to be proscribed.

The italic is used to mark a passage in foreign language, therefore one will use of quotation marks and the italic for a quotation in foreign language, which will allow a clear distinction with the higher French quotation two lines. The italic is done inside the quotation marks (which do not have to be in italic).

If the quotation is introduced by a colon and that its character of quotation is clear, one does not put quotation marks but one uses simply the italic. The possible translation is as a Roman, between brackets if the quotation is guillemétée, between quotation marks if it is not it between the quotation marks and the quotation:

is “Schweiz”, “Switzerland”, “Svizzera”, “Svizra”, “Liechtenstein”

In Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish

In Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish, one uses” right quotation marks rounded” (closing English quotation marks), at the same time like opening and closing quotation marks.

In Russian, Ukrainian and Belorusse

In Russian, and in the connected languages, one uses “French quotation marks” (but without space) on the first level, and of the „German quotation marks “on the second level.

In Chinese and Japanese

There exist various types of quotation marks according to the mode of writing. In horizontal writing, one uses mainly “as opening quotation mark and” closing quotation mark, whether it is for the dialogs or to mark certain words. The Japanese use sometimes hollowed out forms more intended to mark the eye like 'and'. To obtain the same effect, the Chinese have quotation marks with the Frenchwoman 《and》 (although occasionally the Japanese also make use of it). The English quotation marks are useful in a very occasional way. In vertical writing, these quotation marks undergo a rotation for obvious reasons of esthétisme.
The quotation marks are generally not followed or preceded by space because they occupy (as for any Sino-Japanese character) a Cadratin, which simulates the presence of small spaces.

Data-processing coding

Notes

the codes Unicode lower than 128 are identical to the codes ASCII, Windows-1252 and MacRoman.
the codes Unicode lower than 256 are identical to the codes ISO-8859-1.
the prefixes 0x and U+ are followed hexadecimal figures .
numerical entities HTML make it possible to note all the characters by using the Unicode codes. The prefix & is used; # for the decimal digits (& #187;) and & #x for the hexadecimal figures (& #xBB;).

Recall, other close symbols in aspect:

Random links: