Re: Quotation marks: Using “” instead of ""

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Tue, 2008-05-13 at 17:33 +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Tue, 13 May 2008 12:22:51 -0400
> Pat Suwalski <pat suwalski net> wrote:
> 
> > Alan Cox wrote:
> > > Put the English quotes in the en_US and en_GB translations, put German
> > > quotes in the de ones and so on.
> > 
> > This, if course, makes something like the very tiny en_CA locale into a 
> > rather full locale. I suppose many generic messages can go into just "en".
> 
> Which rules does Canada follow for the ending of a sentence with quoted
> text ?
> 	"quoted text."
> or
> 	"quoted text". 
> 
> That might need a locale anyway

Most English locales besides American put punctuation
outside quotation marks, unless it logically belongs
inside the quotation marks.

It should be noted, however, that even many Americans
prefer the logical punctuation placement, especially
within the computer industry.  The thread-starter was
about Nautilus, and I suspect the bulk of the cases
involve quotation marks surrounding file names or
other identifiers.  CMS has this to say (¶6.8):

  In computer-related writing, in which a file name or
  other character string enclosed in quotation marks might
  be rendered inaccurate or ambiguous by the addition of
  punctuation within the quotation marks, the alternative
  system may be used....

The "alternative system" here is logical quotation.
For the majority of cases we're considering (quoting
file names and such), everybody should use logical
quotation, so the issue is moot.

--
Shaun