Markdown italics and quotation marks

Markdown italics and quotation marks

[Some Author Guy]

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I'm writing a book with ships in it. It's not uncommon for a quote to begin 
with the name of a ship, which I will attempt to italicize, but then to 
continue with normal speech, which ought not to be italicized. Consider the 
following paragraph:

*"Shipname* is in port for the next week."

This always fails. I get a pair of asterisks in the output and no italics. 
I don't have this problem without the unbalanced quotation mark, but I 
don't know why that is. I can't imagine why the quote would have any 
significance.

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Re: Markdown italics and quotation marks

[John MacFarlane]

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Do it this way:

“*Shipname* is in port for the next week.”


> On Apr 4, 2023, at 4:22 PM, Some Author Guy <archer884-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
> I'm writing a book with ships in it. It's not uncommon for a quote to begin with the name of a ship, which I will attempt to italicize, but then to continue with normal speech, which ought not to be italicized. Consider the following paragraph:
> 
> *"Shipname* is in port for the next week."
> 
> This always fails. I get a pair of asterisks in the output and no italics. I don't have this problem without the unbalanced quotation mark, but I don't know why that is. I can't imagine why the quote would have any significance.
> 
> -- 
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "pandoc-discuss" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to pandoc-discuss+unsubscribe-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org <mailto:pandoc-discuss+unsubscribe-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org>.
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pandoc-discuss/d0cd8bd4-e274-4a91-a34d-5d72cbc4b984n%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pandoc-discuss/d0cd8bd4-e274-4a91-a34d-5d72cbc4b984n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

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Re: Markdown italics and quotation marks

[Daniel Staal]

On 4/4/23 7:22 PM, Some Author Guy wrote:
> I'm writing a book with ships in it. It's not uncommon for a quote to 
> begin with the name of a ship, which I will attempt to italicize, but 
> then to continue with normal speech, which ought not to be italicized. 
> Consider the following paragraph:
> 
> *"Shipname* is in port for the next week."
> 
> This always fails. I get a pair of asterisks in the output and no 
> italics. I don't have this problem without the unbalanced quotation 
> mark, but I don't know why that is. I can't imagine why the quote would 
> have any significance.

This one it's actually easier to see the issue in HTML.  Here's what 
you're writing:

<em><quote>Shipname</em> is in port for the next week.</quote>

You can see in that the tags are improperly nested.  Now, I can see an 
argument that Markdown shouldn't need to follow nesting conventions like 
HTML does, but the point stands that you have two overlapping tag 
sequences.  (And in this case at least, I think it's also good English 
grammar - you're trying to italicize the name of the ship, not the start 
of the quote.)

As John has already said, correcting the nesting will solve the issue:

<quote><em>Shipname</em> is in port for the next week.</quote>

Or in Markdown:

"*Shipname* is in port for the next week."

Daniel T. Staal

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