[9front] Troff ms srefs, weird commata

[9front] Troff ms srefs, weird commata

[sirjofri]

Hello 9front devs,

I was looking at srefs style for typesetting references. I noticed some 
very weird behavior:

Reference titles (eg articles) are typeset like this: "Title," Journal 
.... The comma is _inside_ the quotes, which is very weird. I checked the 
document in /sys/doc/9.ps, where the comma is placed outside the quotes: 
"Title", Journal, which is also what I know.

Is this style just a regular style I don't know? Is a patch interesting?
It is only relevant when using refer.

sirjofri

Re: [9front] Troff ms srefs, weird commata

[sirjofri]

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--upas-aocspkeitrmyvqqcehkjepjygq
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Hello,

this patch places the commas behind the quotes around the title.

Before: Author, "Title," Journal, ...
After: Author, "Title", Journal, ...

It also changes the quoting style from the old troff ``Title'' to “Title”.

sirjofri

.

Re: [9front] Troff ms srefs, weird commata

[sirjofri]

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--upas-rsralarpyqzfsbifhotfeeiqfu
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Hello,

this patch places the commas behind the quotes around the title.

Before: Author, "Title," Journal, ...
After: Author, "Title", Journal, ...

It also changes the quoting style from the old troff ``Title'' to “Title”.

sirjofri

.

Re: [9front] Troff ms srefs, weird commata

[Amavect]

The three major US citation styles (MLA, APA, Chicago) use periods inside of the quotes.
IEEE style citations puts the comma on the inside.
https://ieee-dataport.org/sites/default/files/analysis/27/IEEE%20Citation%20Guidelines.pdf
None of these exactly match Plan 9 style, of course.

This has it inside, but I don't know when it was typeset.
http://a.papnet.eu/UNIX/v7/files/doc/11_refer.pdf

General US writing style is to put punctuation inside of quotes, no matter if it was part of the quote.

My personal opinion is to have the comma outside if it's not part of the title.
standards are fun :)

Thanks,
Amavect

[9front] Re: Troff ms srefs, weird commata

[magma698hfsp273p9f]

Amavect <amavect@gmail.com> writes:

> General US writing style is to put punctuation inside of quotes, no
> matter if it was part of the quote.

Agreed.

Additionally, footnotes should be typeset following punctuation and/or
quotes.  Computer typesetting often gets this detail wrong, too.

Re: [9front] Re: Troff ms srefs, weird commata

[sirjofri]

19.02.2021 06:50:56 magma698hfsp273p9f@icebubble.org:
> Additionally, footnotes should be typeset following punctuation and/or
> quotes.  Computer typesetting often gets this detail wrong, too.

Wrong. Computers shouldn't typeset at all. It's the people doing it 
wrong.

It makes sense to follow the same rules in quoting. In German we have 
this: use the punctuation from the quote (eg. "Some text," or "some 
text?"), if there is none and you need it, place it outside (eg. "Some 
text", or "some text"?).

In the footnotes the title doesn't end with punctuation, so in German it 
would be "Title", almost always (except the title ends with something, 
then it would also contain it: "title?", bla).

So it's only natural that "title," journal looks very weird to my German 
eyes.

In addition to that, I looked at 9.ps and it was also different there 
("title", journal).

sirjofri

[9front] Re: Troff ms srefs, weird commata

[magma698hfsp273p9f]

sirjofri <sirjofri+ml-9front@sirjofri.de> writes:

> It makes sense to follow the same rules in quoting. In German we have
> this: use the punctuation from the quote (eg. "Some text," or "some
> text?"), if there is none and you need it, place it outside (eg. "Some
> text", or "some text"?).

That WOULD make more sense, but that's not how we do it in English.  :(

> In the footnotes the title doesn't end with punctuation, so in German
> it would be "Title", almost always (except the title ends with
> something, then it would also contain it: "title?", bla).

You misunderstundhtme.  I think you're confusing footnotes with
endnotes/bibliography.  When you typeset a footnote, it should come
after any adjacent punctuation, including quotation marks, like this:

  Sirjofri says, "The worst language is English."[1]

as opposed to this:

  Sirjofri asks, "Is the best language Lojban[2]?"

or, worse yet, this:

  Did Sirjofri just say, "Toki Pona[3]"?

Re: [9front] Re: Troff ms srefs, weird commata

[sirjofri]

20.02.2021 03:11:24 magma698hfsp273p9f@icebubble.org:
> sirjofri <sirjofri+ml-9front@sirjofri.de> writes:
>> It makes sense to follow the same rules in quoting. In German we have
>> this: use the punctuation from the quote (eg. "Some text," or "some
>> text?"), if there is none and you need it, place it outside (eg. "Some
>> text", or "some text"?).
>
> That WOULD make more sense, but that's not how we do it in English.  :(

Man, this is complex.

>> In the footnotes the title doesn't end with punctuation, so in German
>> it would be "Title", almost always (except the title ends with
>> something, then it would also contain it: "title?", bla).
>
> You misunderstundhtme.  I think you're confusing footnotes with
> endnotes/bibliography.  When you typeset a footnote, it should come
> after any adjacent punctuation, including quotation marks, like this:

Yeah, I'm talking about the references themselves, so what's in the 
footnotes. I rarely use direct quotes anyway.

In German it would be:

>   Sirjofri says, "The worst language is English."[1]

  Sirjofri sagt: „Die schlimmste Sprache ist Englisch.“[1]

(The quote includes the punctuation.)

> as opposed to this:
>
>   Sirjofri asks, "Is the best language Lojban[2]?"

  Sirjofri fragt: „Ist die beste Sprache Lojban?“[2]

> or, worse yet, this:
>
>   Did Sirjofri just say, "Toki Pona[3]"?

  Hat Sirjofri eben gesagt, „Toki Pona“[3]?

We rarely do endnotes in German, but footnotes instead, and using 
superscript markers is more common than brackets. Btw these examples are 
different when citing indirectly:

  Hat Sirjofri eben gesagt, Englisch sei schwer?[4]

(No quotes, footnote marker always behind the sentence or passage.)

My original question only is about the quoted title in the footnotes and 
bibliography, which is always printed as:

[5] Authors, ”Title,“ Journal, Date, ....

To my German eyes this looks like the title contains the comma in the 
original source and there's no distinction between title and journal. It 
just looks very wrong.

Today I have to send in my thesis, with the adjustment I made (”title“, 
journal). If that's wrong in English I should change it again.

sirjofri

Re: [9front] Re: Troff ms srefs, weird commata

[Marshall Conover]

That's fine, it's not a grammar thing but a style thing, like Egyptian
brackets. In this case you're using "British style" instead of
"American style."

> The above examples also show that the American style places commas and
periods inside the quotation marks, even if they are not in the original
material. British style (more sensibly) places unquoted periods and commas
outside the quotation marks. For all other punctuation, the British and
American styles are in agreement: unless the punctuation is part of the
quoted material, it goes outside the quotation marks.

 From thepunctuationguide.com/british-versus-american-style.html

As someone who grew up in the US and was a weirdo trained with Strunk
and White/the
AP style guide it'll look odd to me, but I think most people won't blink,
and I certainly don't think it requires changing in your thesis, unless
someone explicitly yells at you for it.

On Mon, Feb 22, 2021 at 2:36 AM sirjofri <sirjofri+ml-9front@sirjofri.de> wrote:
>
>
> 20.02.2021 03:11:24 magma698hfsp273p9f@icebubble.org:
> > sirjofri <sirjofri+ml-9front@sirjofri.de> writes:
> >> It makes sense to follow the same rules in quoting. In German we have
> >> this: use the punctuation from the quote (eg. "Some text," or "some
> >> text?"), if there is none and you need it, place it outside (eg. "Some
> >> text", or "some text"?).
> >
> > That WOULD make more sense, but that's not how we do it in English.  :(
>
> Man, this is complex.
>
> >> In the footnotes the title doesn't end with punctuation, so in German
> >> it would be "Title", almost always (except the title ends with
> >> something, then it would also contain it: "title?", bla).
> >
> > You misunderstundhtme.  I think you're confusing footnotes with
> > endnotes/bibliography.  When you typeset a footnote, it should come
> > after any adjacent punctuation, including quotation marks, like this:
>
> Yeah, I'm talking about the references themselves, so what's in the
> footnotes. I rarely use direct quotes anyway.
>
> In German it would be:
>
> >   Sirjofri says, "The worst language is English."[1]
>
>   Sirjofri sagt: „Die schlimmste Sprache ist Englisch.“[1]
>
> (The quote includes the punctuation.)
>
> > as opposed to this:
> >
> >   Sirjofri asks, "Is the best language Lojban[2]?"
>
>   Sirjofri fragt: „Ist die beste Sprache Lojban?“[2]
>
> > or, worse yet, this:
> >
> >   Did Sirjofri just say, "Toki Pona[3]"?
>
>   Hat Sirjofri eben gesagt, „Toki Pona“[3]?
>
> We rarely do endnotes in German, but footnotes instead, and using
> superscript markers is more common than brackets. Btw these examples are
> different when citing indirectly:
>
>   Hat Sirjofri eben gesagt, Englisch sei schwer?[4]
>
> (No quotes, footnote marker always behind the sentence or passage.)
>
> My original question only is about the quoted title in the footnotes and
> bibliography, which is always printed as:
>
> [5] Authors, ”Title,“ Journal, Date, ....
>
> To my German eyes this looks like the title contains the comma in the
> original source and there's no distinction between title and journal. It
> just looks very wrong.
>
> Today I have to send in my thesis, with the adjustment I made (”title“,
> journal). If that's wrong in English I should change it again.
>
> sirjofri



-- 
Have a good day,

Marshall Conover