Is there a name for this?

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Are you suggesting that these are quotation marks used for emphasis, rather than to indicate direct speech?

That is a possibliity but I do not know. It may be that she was following some 1846 usage that died out.

I think that AnotherCat's post above may very very well be as close to being correct as we are likely to get.

[AlexBell]

Just to add another layer of confusion: I've come across another couple of 'statements' where Ms Brontë has a character say two sentences, one following immediately after the other. They are even on the same line of text. The first sentence is quoted as one does usually; the second sentence is quoted like the second one in the post which started this thread.

I'm sorry, I can't quote the section: I just ground my teeth and moved on.

[frahse]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'd call it "getting your punctuation wrong".

Agreed. It might be a "device" utilized by these authors to make some unknown point, but I believe it a poor device.

[Pulpmeister]

Just an obsolete style. A similar one that you will encounter in some old books is when a long passage is quoted, (usually in text books or the like) the double quotes are at the beginning end of every line of text in the quotation.

Like this:

"A similar one that you will encounter"
"in some old books is when a long"
"passage is quoted (usually in text"
"books and the like) the double quotes"
"are at the beginning and end of every"
"line of text in the quotation."

Weird to modern eyes, but not uncommon then.

Not all punctuation and paragraphing was always dictated by authors, by the way. Often the author's work manuscript was adjusted to fit the publisher's house style.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by Pulpmeister

Just an obsolete style. A similar one that you will encounter in some old books is when a long passage is quoted, (usually in text books or the like) the double quotes are at the beginning end of every line of text in the quotation.

Like this:

"A similar one that you will encounter"
"in some old books is when a long"
"passage is quoted (usually in text"
"books and the like) the double quotes"
"are at the beginning and end of every"
"line of text in the quotation."

Weird to modern eyes, but not uncommon then.

Not all punctuation and paragraphing was always dictated by authors, by the way. Often the author's work manuscript was adjusted to fit the publisher's house style.

What would you do if you were preparing an ebook for the MR library from a book which used this style?

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

What would you do if you were preparing an ebook for the MR library from a book which used this style?

I briefly did a bit of work with Distributed Proofreaders, and they had a rule against changing the text. You corrected OCR errors, and could change obvious typos that one of the original editors missed, but you left everything else the same as on the printed page. Grammatical fashions change, so "correcting" the text just looks silly a few decades down the road. You can save yourself a lot of effort and grief by just not changing stuff.

That said, I'd remove the extra quotes, because they'll look stupid when reflowed into different lines.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by rkomar

<-- snipped -->

That said, I'd remove the extra quotes, because they'll look stupid when reflowed into different lines.

Thanks. I would remove them too, for the same reason.