Question about punctuation for German text

[GrannyGrump]

I am doing a multi-lingual book that has German verse (Struwwelpeter). Unfortunately, I myself am only monolingual.

Please recommend the better choice for quotation marks:

Should I use the guillemets (double-angle quotes) I find in the Gutenberg transcription, or should I use the curly lowered/raised quotes (don't know the proper name) I see in the pdf scan?


And what might be the correct numeric entities to use in the html code?

Is either one likely to have problems being supported in reader fonts?

Hoping to hear some feedback!

gG

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

Should I use the guillemets (double-angle quotes) I find in the Gutenberg transcription, or should I use the curly lowered/raised quotes (don't know the proper name) I see in the pdf scan?

IMHO, it's acceptable to use the original quotation marks in German poems.

You can use the following entities:

a) curly quotes

<p>&bdquo;Fahrvergnügen&ldquo;</p>

„Fahrvergnügen“

<p>&sbquo;Fahrvergnügen&lsquo;</p>

‚Fahrvergnügen‘

Note that German quotations end with what English readers would consider opening quotation marks.

b) guillemets

<p>&raquo;Fahrvergnügen&laquo;</p>

»Fahrvergnügen«

<p>&rsaquo;Fahrvergnügen&lsaquo;</p>

›Fahrvergnügen‹

Most German publishers nowadays use guillemets, however, the original Struwelpeter contained curly quotation marks.

Here's a link to a German website that contains hi res scans of the original German book.

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

Is either one likely to have problems being supported in reader fonts?

German quotation marks are supported by pretty much all readers and apps. (They're also part of the default Windows-1252 code page.)

[Gudy]

The (relatively) contemporary edition I have uses standard upper/lower curly quotes (numerical entities 8222 and 8221). Any half-way decent font should support these.

The 2nd edition from 1846 (link to the PDF at the upper right) uses quotes only inconsistently, but when it does, they're also upper/lower curly quotes - well, kind of - but certainly not guillemets.

[GrannyGrump]

Thank you both for the good advice!

And thank you so much also for the links --- these get me early-edition illustrations I was missing from the Wikisource scan.

I am having fun with this, but I keep wondering how many little toddlers were terrified by the scissor-man!

[RobertDDL]

Doitsu has already answered your question, but please note that, whether you prefer curly quotes (my preference) or guillemets, like in the U.S. single quotes (with some dubitable exceptions) are only used for quotes within quotes!

(And I'm long past toddler age but Struwwelpeter still scares me.)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by RobertDDL

(And I'm long past toddler age but Struwwelpeter still scares me.)

As an off-topic comment, I recently came across the word "Struwwelpeter" in a book I was reading:

As Grant cocked his head the better to listen, he became aware that over the banister of the floor above hung an inverted human head, grotesque and horrible, its hair spread round it by the force of gravity into a Struwwelpeter effect.

I had no idea what this meant, and the Kindle's dictionary was no help. Your post prompted me to do a Google search and I am now enlightened .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struwwelpeter