Message-Id: <9302041055.AA23656@sc.zib-berlin.dbp.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Date:         Thu, 4 Feb 93 11:52:25 +0100
From: rolf.lindgren@USIT.UIO.NO
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
To: Multiple Recipients of <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Subject:      Re: document classes & numbering systems
Status: R


Robin Fairbairns writes:
 > This misses the point (whose enormity perhaps even Don misses).
 >
 > It is perfectly correct (British) English to write
 >
 >   He said ``I've finished the job.'' and walked out of the room.
 >
 > Since there is a full sentence quoted.  The period (or full stop as we
 > call it) moves out of the quote if it's the sentence _containing_ the
 > quote that's being terminated.  The same is true of parentheses - an
 > entire sentence parenthesised keeps its full stop within the
 > parenthesis, while a parenthesised note at the end of a sentence
 > doesn't have a full stop inside.  This is not really a problem with
 > the sort of technical typesetting that started this thread, but it's a
 > problem none the less.

Well... if the author is aware of the possibility that the document might
be subject to different typesetting traditions, it's always possible to
break the ligature mechanism by doing

	He said ``I've finished the job.{}''and walked out of the room.

	`` and '' might still be transformed to << and >> or ` and ',
	while placing the period would be up to the proofreader.

... Most authors I've worked with don't know punctuation rules at all.
This would force them to learn them ...

-roffe
rolf.lindgren@usit.uio.no