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Re: Odd typo in update message?


From: Thomas Maier
Subject: Re: Odd typo in update message?
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 11:33:14 +0100

On Tue, 2005-03-15 at 14:31 -0500, Larry Jones wrote:
> Mark E. Hamilton writes:
> > 
> > Is this in fact a typo, or is there some other meaning/use for this 
> > `name' pattern?
> 
> It's a well-established way of simulating ``real'' (typesetting) quote
> marks using only standard ASCII characters.  In fact, the original ASCII
> standard even named the two characters LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK and
> RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK in addition to their other names.  Many
> fonts display them symmetrically, but alas many do not.  CVS has used
> the convention inconsistently in its messages, I believe Derek has made
> a concerted effort recently to use them more consistently.

Then I'd suggest to consistently _not_ use them any longer.
Well-establishing this way of quoting was probably the Wrong Thing to
do; at least it has become so.  For an in-depth discussion of the
matter, see

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/quotes.html

In short: 
Please do not use the ASCII grave accent (0x60) as a left quotation mark
together with the ASCII apostrophe (0x27) as the corresponding right
quotation mark. Your text will otherwise appear rather strange with most
modern fonts [...]. [...] If you can use only ASCII's typewriter
characters, then use the apostrophe character (0x27) as both the left
and right quotation mark. If you can use Unicode characters, nice
directional quotation marks are available in the form of characters U
+2018 and U+2019.

Regards, Thomas.

-- 
Thomas Maier - Research Assistant - University of Kassel, Germany





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