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English punctuation/quotes in a dialog? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 1 of 9 01 February 2017 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Because I don't spend that much time in English-speaking countries and I don't buy as many books as before, I'm not quite in touch with modern English typographical conventions, hence this rather nit-picky question.
I happen to be reading an English fiction novel downloaded from a Russian website and some of the punctuation, use of quotes, etc., especially in dialogues, strikes me as rather peculiar. I have found several passages that follow this pattern: «[...] And you—« He turned away. «I'm going [...].» Could anyone please comment on this use of angled (these are all over the text), and opening and closing quotes? -- Is this English punctuation normal, correct but unusual, just Russian-style-shoehorned-into-this...? Edit: wording, typos. Edited by mrwarper on 13 April 2017 at 11:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4053 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 2 of 9 01 February 2017 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I conducted a quick Google search and came up with the following:
Quotation Mark - Wikipedia Beyond the above, I have noticed that many Windows-based text messaging systems seem to convert keystrokes for quotation marks ("...")automatically into those commonly-used by other languages as shown in the Wikipedia article. As an aside, while the HTLAL remains a veritable gold mine of discussions on language-learning, and while many members may continue to read the recent posts, most of the "more active" members have registered on the replacement forum: A Language Learner's Forum Were you to register on the replacement and post your question to the members, you would likely receive a great number of replies. See you over there! Edited by Speakeasy on 01 February 2017 at 7:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 3 of 9 01 February 2017 at 8:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for the link and all. See my user avatar and signature 'over there'? ;)
OK, by pure luck I found the same file (down to the same scannos, or typos) in a server in an English-speaking domain -- it has pure ASCII quotes (") and double hyphens instead of em dashes, etc. in the text, as one would expect, so I would conclude the Russian file is a version of that one after going through some kind of automatic converter that assumes Russian punctuation and quotation marks are OK for all texts regardless of language. I'm still interested, though, in any comments on whether such "strange" quotation styles are acceptable in English, and/or can be actually found in print, etc. Edited by mrwarper on 01 February 2017 at 8:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 9 15 March 2017 at 7:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think Russian got those angled quotation marks from French. So maybe you'll find them in Canadian publications sometimes?
Also, the quotation marks in your example aren't correct in Russian either. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4053 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 5 of 9 15 March 2017 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
In most English language media published in Canada -- outside of the province of Québec -- the standard (or at least the most frequently encountered) punctuation would be "...". Within the Canadian province of Québec, where French is the sole official language, several sources, including "l'Office québécois de la langue française " recommend that the angled punctuation < ... > be used. I would imagine that this recommendation follows the standard practice in France. However, actual practice in Québec media includes both sets of quotation marks. I suspect that the current practice in Québec is due to the very heavy influence of Anglo-Canadian and Anglo-American media practice. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4666 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 6 of 9 12 April 2017 at 12:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't recall ever seeing those angled quotes in any English publication in the UK. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Mork the Fiddle Senior Member United States Joined 3970 days ago 86 posts - 159 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 7 of 9 12 April 2017 at 9:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Never in my whole life have I ever seen angled quotes or any quotes other than " in any English language publication. Though the 'normal' quotes can be at an angle like this: “Now is the winter of our discontent.” 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 8 of 9 13 April 2017 at 11:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Exactly, neither have I -- I wanted to make sure, though. I rarely see English language publications in actual print any more so I'd have to judge from maybe 1% of the input volume you have -- or I could ask ;) Thanks for confirming my suspicions.
Oh, that's a common IT vs. typography problem: By typographical convention, the right way to write quotes in English is using single or double "comma" characters, inverted for opening and closing quotes (‘’“”) just like angled quotes are mirrored («»). However, in its early days, the IT field was not just Anglocentric, which made using any "special" characters like «» a PITA if possible at all, it was also shaped and lead by lazy / typographically illiterate people (your pick there) who thought it was easier to use the same characters for both opening and closing quotes, and all kinds of horizontal separations—hence the straight quote " and ' characters (note that ' often doubles as an apostrophe too). This is why "normal" (read: English) yet comparatively infrequent characters like “, ”, –, or — are missing from most digital texts as well, or are instead replaced with their typographically poor counterparts ', ", --, or ---, like in 99.9% of my own posts here, yes ;p Edited by mrwarper on 13 April 2017 at 11:15am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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