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#31 |
mostly an observer
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I have been following this with (somewhat bemused) interest. At first I didn't see the point of what you're trying to do--that you were searching for the solution to a problem that doesn't exist. So I looked at the Chicago Manual of Style for enlightenment and found that, as expected, it didn't address the situation at all. But when I look closer, I see that there is indeed a sliver of space between doubled quotation marks, and these are not duplicated in my (ancient, to be sure) version of Word. I'm at 10.25-26 in the 14th edition.
The CSM gives this example, of a quote within a quote within a quote: “I eat what I see.”’” But on the printed page, there is a discernible (though just discernible) space between the single quote and the enclosing double quotes. Later: Interestingly, after hitting Post, I can see the barest sliver between those sets of quotes. It's more than I see in Word (or pasted into this window) but still less than what I see in the CSM. Last edited by Notjohn; 05-10-2015 at 05:59 AM. |
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#32 | |
Wizard
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Code:
This is a sample of “ ‘Outer Quotes’ right next to ‘inner quotes.’ ” Code:
This is a sample of “ ‘Outer Quotes’ right next to ‘inner quotes.’ ” Code:
This is a sample of “‘Outer Quotes’ right next to ‘inner quotes.’” Having normal spaces around the quotation marks might lead to the device causing some ugly line breaks and/or the quotation marks may get mangled if you run it through some "smarten punctuation" algorithms. Side Note: I ran into this same exact question when I was first OCRing books. I thought that the space between quotation marks was a typo the first few times I ran across it (it rarely occurs in the books/journals I convert). So I went hunting down the explanation. Don't have a specific source, but I recall spending a few days reading all the sites/topics on the subject. ![]() Last edited by Tex2002ans; 05-10-2015 at 06:56 AM. |
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#33 | |
Guru
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Traditionally, this was the domain of the printer and font cutter. Certainly not the editor or writer, which is who the Chicago Manual is written for. They left that to those with inky fingers. It was a craft, not something codified in a manual. These digital days the "typesetter" is often quite unaware of the typographic techniques and conventions that evolved over the centuries. And the first decades of digital type had very little input from typographers. And so we see straight quotemarks on book covers, slanted type masquerading as italic, and any number of other typographic faux pas on a daily basis. The tools to create fine typography are there in all the layout software, but are often ignored or misused. The authoritative work in this field is The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. I can't find him pronouncing on the issue explicitly, but in his discussion of quotation marks he uses the illustration below, and there isn't a comma in that book he didn't personally approve. The space between the marks is clear. I primarily work in print publishing, and long ago took an interest in fonts and was soon adjusting and adding kerns to the ones I used. When I noticed a spacing problem I would try to fix it by adjusting the font kerning table, then it would be automatically fixed every time that combination of characters came up. While with ebooks I've had to abandon a lot of the niceties I would apply to print, when possible I try to apply the same principles. And the mashing together of quotation marks is something that makes me wince in any medium. In an ebook I generally leave the body text as the default, so each user can choose what suits his device. So I can't kern the fonts, even if it was supported by all the ebook readers. After all the suggestions and info by others and my own experimentation, I found that my original solution, thinsp, works in most cases in epubs. But not readers using Qt4. Older versions of Calibre and Sigil in particular <p>“ ‘Honeymoon Letter-spacing, like : <span style="letter-spacing:.166em">“</span>‘Honeymoon works in Sigil and Calibre, but not in FBreader. And apparently is not officially supported in epub2. Margins work in most cases too, but not in FBreader (which is a bit deficient in support for margin styles). <p>“<span style="margin-left:0.166em">‘</span>Honeymoon or <p><span style="margin-right:0.166em">“</span>‘Honeymoon I had the bright idea I could create a pseudo space character by : <p>“<span style="margin-left:0.166em"/>‘Honeymoon This works in Sigil, Calibre and Firefox, but not FBreader. And Sigil's "pretty print" clean on save would just delete it, apparently deciding it was a NOP. Not a good sign it would be left alone or honoured by other software. I did find one method that works universally to create arbitrary spacing, by scaling a nbsp: <p>“<span style="font-size:0.6em"> </span>‘Honeymoon The 0.6 factor gives a result close to thinsp. So, I'll recall that if I need to do some odd spacing in the future, But for the original quotes, I'll revert to thinsp, as it turns out that the only problem is with the program (Calibre) I was using to preview it, not the other apps and readers. It was educational, even if I ended up back where I started. Last edited by AlanHK; 05-10-2015 at 11:04 AM. |
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#34 |
frumious Bandersnatch
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Note that, by going through all the trouble of encoding the spacing in some other way, you are preventing those who have a properly kerned font installed and selected as default from actually using it.
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#35 | |
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And the 999 out of 1000 readers who don't have such a setup will get a layout without merged quotemarks. So, win-win. |
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#36 | ||
Wizard
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Hyphenation should be left to the hyphenation algorithm, kerning should be left to the font, and the text itself should be pure. ![]() At least things have gotten better on this front since ~2011-2012: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=132182 https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=189487 |
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#37 | ||
frumious Bandersnatch
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![]() But don't misunderstand me, I don't mean the HTML/CSS way is wrong, only that it's not perfect and you should consider the cons as well as the pros to make your decision. And of course, as long as your decision is different from mine, I may try to convince you ![]() |
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#38 | |||
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I'm not going to go through a book and put spans between each pair of characters. In fact, only 5 in the entire book. This is just a small tweak that fixes a small problem. As for "hackish"... I guess you've never looked at the code of the average commercial ebook. Or one produced by a Calibre conversion. I have spent hours cleaning up stupid code and endless nested spans that negate each other. Sometimes an ebook can be reduced by 20% or more just by simplifying the code with a bunch of S&R. The tiny bit of code I add is functional. But how it looks on the page/screen is the only real test, and I think this looks better. Quote:
It's not going to break searching, unless you are search for a pair of nested quotemarks. As I got it, the text had a singel spce between them anyway, so its no less searchable. I hope the hyphenation isn't idiotic enough to put a hyphen between two quotemarks. Quote:
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#39 | ||
frumious Bandersnatch
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Quote:
Quote:
![]() Just an example of how some things that can go wrong: Code:
some line with <a name="p123"/>an empty element some line with<a name="p123"/> an empty element |
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#40 | ||
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I haven't seen an alternative that is widely supported. Quote:
Last edited by AlanHK; 05-11-2015 at 08:02 AM. |
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#41 |
mostly an observer
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When I was at university, I spent every Wednesday afternoon at the print shop, laying out the student paper on the block. I never ran into this question! Perhaps the linotypists, like the Chicago Manual of Style, felt it wasn't necessary for my education. Or perhaps they'd never encountered quotes-within-quotes.
Out of curiosity, I looked at my most recent e-book to see whether it contained any instance of quote-within-quote. It doesn't, but I did discover several straight apostrophes instead of ’s! I will fix them when I get back from the gym. |
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