Single quote marks from quotes formatting element

I'm creating a style, based on Chicago, that uses single quotes round titles.

The "right way" ought to be something like:
<text variable="title" quotes="single"/>
but CSL only allows quotes="true", which in Zotero gives double quotes ... I can hack it with:
<text variable="title" prefix="&#8216;" suffix="&#8217;"/>
but this isn't exactly tidy!

In the CSL syntax, quotes looks like a bit of an afterthought - it's just tagged on right at the end, not with the other formatting elements.

My suggestion is therefore actually a change to the CSL schema, to add single quotes:
attribute quotes { "none" | "false" | "single" | "double" | "true" }?
where the booleans are just for backwards compatibility, and equate to "none" and "double" respectively.
  • edited October 29, 2008
    rintze made a similar observation re. MHRA style.

    Prefix/suffix is a fine enough work around. I agree that applying an attribute of "quote type" is a reasonable feature request if "quotes" is meant to be used.

    There are many quote styles: there are single and double that are either straight or curly and one or more are sometimes at the baseline (as in Spanish) but usually both are above it. There are also Guillemets, etc.
  • My question was: is this really a CSL limitation, or an implementation problem? Put simply, is this an issue about locale-specific handling of quotation, or not (and therefore we would expect some styles for language X to use single quotes, and other styles for the same language to use double quotes)?
  • Within English, there are some citations that use single quotes & some that use double quotes. Other locales also have multiple quoting styles. Locales, alone, will not solve the issue.
  • I think Bruce means to ask whether (in the case of English) this is an EN_GB vs EN_US issue, and whether or not styles like Chicago could not simply have ONE style description which was applied two different ways based on the locale (US, GB, etc). If the problem could be solved this way, it would solve it all at once for a number of styles that are used both in US-doublequote and GB-singlequote versions, rather than having to create duplicates of each (which anyway will have a tendency to multiply, since bibliographic stylesheets frequently leave some latitude to the author/editor).

    It still remains to be clarified (1) if single vs. double quote switching could be sucessfully implimented using locales, (2) if that wouldn't cause adverse side effects for users, and (3) if there in fact are other styles which are in use both in single and double quote versions.
  • Single vs. double quotes does not seem to have a 1:1 mapping of the different English locales. MHRA is UK & uses single quotes. Some Taylor & Francis journals ( a UK publisher) use double quotes. This is a styling issue, not a locale issue.

    So (1) is no, (2) is N/A, and (3) is probably.

    The answer to (3) shouldn't impact this change--either we make the quotes attribute useful, or we deprecate it & use prefix/suffix instead.
  • I think Bruce means to ask whether (in the case of English) this is an EN_GB vs EN_US issue ...
    Correct; that is what I'm asking.
  • To clarify some points:
    - in the style I'm creating, this isn't the only difference from Chicago - it was just the closest starting point. Yes, it is a UK style. However ...
    - I'd agree with those saying that quote type doesn't track locale. But I think there is an interaction with the separator inside / outside quotes issue discussed elsewhere, which does seem to be reliably locale-dependent.
    - As for other kinds of quote, yes, but how many are used in practice? However if this is a problem, how about using option, eg
    <option name="open-quote" value="&#8216;"/> <!-- or whatever -->
    which actually might be generally better as it is less of a schema change and has better backwards compatibility.
  • I'd agree with those saying that quote type doesn't track locale. But I think there is an interaction with the separator inside / outside quotes issue discussed elsewhere, which does seem to be reliably locale-dependent.
    Correct. We added the quotes feature precisely because the issue is more complex than a simple prefix and suffix.

    Another question: is this a global issue (set on a style-wide basis), or a local one (specific to different variables and such)?
  • Another question: is this a global issue (set on a style-wide basis), or a local one (specific to different variables and such)?
    As far as I can tell, it is the former: I have not seen type-dependent quoting. The only possible hiccup I can think of is re-formatting of "inner quotes" (e.g. quote marks present in the source title that are changed due to the fact that they are nested).
  • edited October 30, 2008
    Another question: is this a global issue (set on a style-wide basis), or a local one (specific to different variables and such)?
    I also think it's generally global to the style, i.e. everything the style wants quoted uses the same quotes - which is not to say there's not a counterexample out there somewhere in the vast universe of citation styles.
    The only possible hiccup I can think of is re-formatting of "inner quotes" (e.g. quote marks present in the source title that are changed due to the fact that they are nested).
    Indeed. Istr the CMS says this is one of the few permissible changes to a quotation - presumably this would apply to e.g. book titles too. But, should Zotero be changing user-entered text? If it should, there's a need for a mapping for the three possible kinds of quote mark - call them open, basic, close. Then if the text uses basic quotes, should they be reformatted, given the style will presumably use open/close quotes?

    Given these pitfalls (there are surely more), I'd go for not changing user-entered text at all and advising the user to edit the relevant citation data.
  • But, should Zotero be changing user-entered text? If it should, there's a need for a mapping for the three possible kinds of quote mark - call them open, basic, close. Then if the text uses basic quotes, should they be reformatted, given the style will presumably use open/close quotes?
    This is partly why I'm asking all these questions; a single feature request can have unintended consequences.

    Also, this issue is partly why I've long advocated avoiding presentational rich text formatting, and to instead support more structural markup. So quotes (within, say, titles) are really quotes, rather than just some dumb text like ...

    'The Title'
    ... or ...

    “The Title”
    But this is somewhat uncharted territory.
  • Hi

    I seem to be having a problem! I use single quotation marks but Zotero keeps putting double quotation marks (instead of single and apostrophe) in the bibliography??
  • edited June 23, 2016
    Zotero auto-converts quotation marks according to the locale used. Either use a different style (e.g. MHRA for single quotes) or, where using a generic style, use the en-GB locale.
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