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="‘" suffix="’"/>
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.
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="‘" suffix="’"/>
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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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="‘"/> <!-- or whatever -->
which actually might be generally better as it is less of a schema change and has better backwards compatibility.
Another question: is this a global issue (set on a style-wide basis), or a local one (specific to different variables and such)?
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.
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.
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??