RE: The HTML q element can sometimes be useful. Discuss.

Thanks Rebeca those are great examples.

I am curious, in the La Regenta example, the second paragraph starts with an ending quote. I take it, that in Spanish that is considered an indicator that a quote is in progress and that is what you meant by a “follow-up quote”. Is that correct? I didn’t know about this and a quick search (in English) didn’t give an explanation.

tex

 

 

From: Rebeca Ruiz Sánchez [mailto:rebeca@cornac.es] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2016 2:48 PM
To: Tex Texin
Cc: public-digipub-ig@w3.org; Florian Rivoal; Nick Barreto; Richard Ishida; www International
Subject: RE: The HTML q element can sometimes be useful. Discuss.

 


El 27/4/2016 8:10 p. m., "Tex Texin" <textexin@xencraft.com> escribió:
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> That and the lack of default quote marks surrounding blockquote.
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Have a look to Spanish classic novel "La Regenta". Interior monologue.

«“¡Oh, a él, a don Álvaro Mesía le pasaba aquello! ¿Y el ridículo? ¡Qué diría Visita, [...] qué diría el mundo entero!

”Dirían que un cura le había derrotado. ¡Aquello pedía sangre! Sí, pero esta era otra”. Si don Álvaro se figuraba al Magistral vestido de levita, acudiendo a un duelo a que él le retaba... sentía escalofríos»

(Clarín Regenta [Esp. 1884-85]).

You can see " follow-up quotes" in this block quote.

And now let's read a dialogue from " The catcher in the rye":

—Dígame, Howitz —le dije—. ¿Pasa usted muchas veces junto al lago del Central Park? 
—¿Qué? 
—El lago, sabe. Ese lago pequeño que hay cerca de Central South Park. Donde están los patos. ¿Sabe, no?
—Sí. ¿Qué pasa con ese lago?

"Hey, listen," I said. "You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?" I realized it was only one chance in a million.

He turned around and looked at me like I was a madman. "What're ya tryna do, bud?" he said. "Kid me?"

Regardless of the typographical sign used, the <q> element may be good for interior monologues but not for dialogues. The <q> element tends to be used in English dialogues because they are rendered usually with quotes. In Spanish the distinction between dialogue and quote is very dramatic because dialogues are typically rendered with em dashes.

Cheers,

Rebeca Ruiz.

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> From: Florian Rivoal [mailto:florian@rivoal.net] 
> Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2016 8:33 AM
> To: Nick Barreto
> Cc: Richard Ishida; W3C Digital Publishing IG; www International
> Subject: Re: The HTML q element can sometimes be useful. Discuss.
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>> On Apr 27, 2016, at 16:14, Nick Barreto <nick@canelo.co> wrote:
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>>> Unlike sentence ending periods, quotation marks do change based on the styling of the document (more so for blockquote than for q, but still).
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>> How semantically different are <q> and <blockquote>, apart from <q> clearly being inline? Or have I just described the entire difference?
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> As far as I understand, that's the difference. Besides the display:block vs display:inline, this also implies that typically, <q> is in the middle of a sentence while <blockquote> is not, but I believe that's it.
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>  - Florian