On 31 Oct 2006, at 9:26PM, Henri Sivonen wrote: > If printed text in French (and other languages) works with the dialog dash > style > without visual hints where you put the <q> and </q> tags, why would an author > want to go though the trouble of tagging the dialog like that and then making > sure > that any styling on the <q> element is suppressed?
In some contexts, direct speech is italicised (unlike other words that happen to be enclosed within the same pair of quotes). Let me quote a passage from Le Monde: > Le policier évoque son étudiant avec émotion. "<i>J'ai vite vu sa volonté > peu > commune d'apprendre et de réussir,</i> dit-il. <i>Il avait la souplesse du > roseau, > la volonté de répondre aux attentes du jury, d'adopter les codes culturels, > clés de > son intégration.</i>" Here, <q> arguably would make sense (instead of <i>, which is what Le Monde currently uses on its website). I cannot remember to have seen this style in a novel, though. -- Ãistein E. Andersen
