Re: [i18n-discuss] The HTML q element can sometimes be useful. Discuss.

r12a via GitHub scripsit:

> I think the HTML5 definition is fairly specific, and points away from 
> use for dialogue ('quoted from another source'), and perhaps usefully 
> so, since dialogue indeed entails a number of different features, not 
> least including the need to bridge around the ',he said ' kind of 
> interposition. 

I have no trouble accepting the HTML5 definition, but I don't think it
can exclude dialogue.  Consider this passage:

    The President said today at a press conference:  "You bear
    everything alone, in this office, but once in a while you have
    to at least try to share it with somebody else."

Now on your argument, this would be a proper use of a q element, because
a source (namely the President) is being quoted, but this variant text
would not be a proper use:

    "I think it would," the President said.  "You bear everything
    alone, in this office, but once in a while you have to at least
    try to share it with somebody else."

because this is a quotation from the 1959 novel _Advise and Consent_
by Allen Drury, and the President referred to is part of the fiction.
(I could have reworded this to avoid the interrupted quotation, but
I think that's orthogonal to the present case.  Interrupted quotations
are less common in reportage than in fiction, but they do happen.)

Is that really what you mean?  If so, I think (with Asmus) that the
distinction is untenable.  Quoting what a person says is as much a
quotation as quoting a written source, and quoting a fictional person
(from within the fiction) is the same as quoting a real person.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan@ccil.org
If I read "upcoming" in [the newspaper] once more, I will be downcoming
and somebody will be outgoing.

Received on Friday, 29 April 2016 21:57:00 UTC