Has anyone else ever seen or heard of using inverted quotation marks at the beginning of the quote and regular quotation marks at the end of the quote? I saw it here (in the little box at the top right of the album cover—,Heut’ Ist Mein Tag"), and it struck me as very odd, and I’ve never seen quotation marks used like this before.
The title font, with its straight commas, seems to render this better than the one in the post itself.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
It’s just the German way of doing things (along with several other nearby countries). Of interest, their closing/right quotation marks are the same as our opening/left ones (as opposed to Poland, Hungary, etc., which have a similar but slightly different convention).
That’s the way I’ve been taught to write quotations the Netherlands.
Alright then, thanks. I thought there would be a wiki article on this, but I couldn’t find it.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Hmm, your link doesn’t take me to any place with quotation marks, but yes. The standard way of writing quotes in my day was a “66” at the beginning of the quote, and a “99” at the end. Computers seem to have eliminated this and replaced it with the double line thingies we’re used to seeing now.
There’s a bit on Wikipediaabout it.
I don’t think you quite understand the OP’s question, Leaffan. You’re talking about something rather different. Did you look at the top right of the movie poster linked to in the OP? The phenomenon where, among other things, the opening quotation marks are low, rather than high, is the one being referred to.
I don’t see a poster in the link: text only. Sorry.
Hm. That’s weird.
(I tried linking directly to the picture, but somehow that doesn’t work? But if you manually enter the URL for the JPEG in that link, it does work. Like I said, weird.)
I know. Firefox gives me text only, and Internet Explorer has a bunch of blank images with a red X in the top left corner. I cannot seem to view the images.
I’d be eternally greatful if someone could tell me why. Here’s what Firefox’s Error Console tells me. I’ve had weird things like this happen before but this is only the second website that I’ve noticed it on, EVER. I’m on a laptop and wirelessly linked to a Cisco router. My desktop computer is hardwired and it doesn’t happen there. I’m really hijacking at this point… sorry.
ETA: Your single link did work in IE when I cut and pasted it into a new session… Now I see the issue. I’m still confused about my browsers though. Thanks.
Hmm… this is kind of weird; linking directly to it won’t work, as has already been pointed out, and the site wouldn’t let me download it directly either. Here is the picture, if you want to know what we’re talking about (I had to copy it and paste it into a photo editor to get it). It must have something to do with their being really protective of their image bandwidth, but I don’t see how that could be totally blocking it for you.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: I posted before I saw that you had already gotten the single link to work.
I get those same Firefox errors in the console, but the page itself renders fine. Are you using any content-blocking software (ad blocking, malware blocking, parental control, that type of thing), or are you perhaps behind a workplace proxy server or something else that might be filtering your stuff?
As for it working when you copy and paste and not when you click on it, some websites do that to preserve bandwidth. When they see that you’re coming from the Straight Dope or any other external site (via HTTP REFERER), they refuse to show you the image.
Yeah, I’m familiar with that. I was WAG-ing that their use of anti-hotlink code might be contributing reason for the pages not loading for Leaffan.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Well, yeah I have ad blocking, but that doesn’t seem to be the reason. The page won’t load in IE with no ad blocking. I can load the individual image though. Like I said, I’ve noticed this on another website and some error message about Mime not being set to text or CSS or HTML or something comes to mind. The other 99.99999% of WWW is fine though. Strange stuff.
Trying to open it by clicking the link in indistinguishable’s message just gave me a blank window in Firefox, but if I then selected the address and hit enter it displayed the picture. That trick often works for me when a site is checking the http referrer.
hmmm, I’m using Firefox with AdBlock Plus and the link in the OP loaded just fine for me, picture and all.
The Internets are weird.
While we’re at it, in French, one uses things called guillemots (which look like small single or double less-than and greater-than signs) to mark quotes. <<Something like this>>, except they’d be a single character, and only as tall as a lower-case letter.
You’re right, and it is mentioned on that same Wiki page. I thought that was interesting, too, because I’ve never seen them used. They look «like this» and there’s even a special non-breaking space that prevents the guillemets from being sent down to the next line (and if you get really technical, you’re supposed to use a quarter-em space, but almost nobody does). Although the article does say that more and more French people are switching over to English-style quotes, especially when not around French keyboards.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
ETA: Weird, I put in those non-breaking spaces, and while the post box accepted them, the output got rid of the spaces altogether.
In Microsoft Word, if you set the language to French or German, it converts the normal " to the correct forms. I just created this in MS Word:
German „Quote“
French « Quote »
Me to (also in the Netherlands), although I mostly use the two high quotations style.
German also uses guillemets[sup]*[/sup] in some printed material, but they point the other way.
»like this«
[sup]*[/sup]note spelling … a guillemot is a bird.
