On 19-Aug-07 12:31:34, Axel Kielhorn wrote: > Hi! > > I'm writing a german document in ms and I'm wondering about the best > way to enter quotation marks. > > Should I > .ds Q \(Bq > .ds U \(lq > and use > \*Q \*U? > > or can I simply use ,,and''? > > The later is much easier to type (and read) and the result looks the > same. > > Axel
Use whichever is most acceptable! There is a very slight difference between \[Bq] and ,, : to get ,, to be exactly like \[Bq] you must a) Move the first "," leftwards by pointsize*0.0012 points b) Then move the second leftwards by pointsize*0.002 points. I.e., in 25-point text: \h'-0.3p',\h'-0.5p', This is unlikely to be visible in normal documents. You could use the "smartquotes" method devised by Werner Lemberg. This was originally defined in terms of the usual \[lq]...\[rq]. the version I have in my personal macros defines .de smartq .ds dblq0 \(lq .ds dblq1 \(rq .nr dblqn 0 .char " \\\\*[dblq\\\\n[dblqn]]\\R'dblqn (1 - \\\\n[dblqn])' .. .de /smartq .rchar " .. Then when you want to turn on smart-quoting, you put .smartq After that, every instance of the keyboard couble-quote " is alterntiely \[lq] and \[rq]. Then, if you want to turn it off, ./smartq You can achieve the same with your \[Bq] with the macro .de smartq .ds dblq0 \(Bq .ds dblq1 \(rq .nr dblqn 0 .char " \\\\*[dblq\\\\n[dblqn]]\\R'dblqn (1 - \\\\n[dblqn])' .. and then "Hier ist ein Beispiel" comes out as if you had typed \[Bq]Hier ist ein Beispiel\[rq] which wouold be exactly what you want -- and no fiddling! The one point to watch is that if, for any reason, you need to have an opening " (\[Bq]) without a matching closing " (\[r]), or a closing " (\[rq]) without a matching opening " (\[Bq]), then in subsequent quoted phrases " ... " they will be the wrong way round. You can solve this by printing a dummy " in the middle of nowhere, e.g. by inserting \Z'\h'-100c'"' anywhere in your text to bring things back into phase. It would be unusual if something printed 1 metre to the left of your page would be visible in your output! Indeed, a neat way of entering this would be to define .char \[""] \Z'\h'-100c'"' and then all you need to type is something like Here I want to bring the quotes\[""] back into phase For example: .smartq .LP "This is a Quote" .LP Here we get " out of phase .LP .LP "This is a Quote" .LP And here we get\[""] back into phase .LP "This is a Quote" Hoping this helps, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 21-Aug-07 Time: 15:30:37 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
