ASCII: Quotation marks

c-sander

Would it be possible to adjust all Quotation marks according to the language of the given title in the bibliography. As it stands, all neutral ' (ASCII 39) and " (ASCII 34) in the DB are tranformed according to the universal language setting of the CSL style, but not individually according to the lang-ID of the title. Hence, there occur many mistakes in the the titles of a bibliography if the correct ' and " (e.g. “ ” « » etc.) are not used in the DB.

bwiernik

By-item language settings aren’t possible in Zotero, but they are in Juris-M, a variant of Zotero with expanded multilingual and legal capabilities: https://juris-m.github.io

adamsmith

(in most languages, using quotation marks consistently, including for foreign language titles, _is_ correct, so this isn't generally a mistake)

c-sander

However, by-item language settings apply to capitalisation rules, don't they? So, using « » automatically instead of “ ” or "" when one item is 'French' would solve the problem.
As I understand it, the use of ' and " is a decision made by the author/publication that is quoted and not by the publication that quotes it. So, consistency looks nice but might disregard the cited author's choice. If one is very careful with the ASCIIs in the Zotero DB-interface, this is not problem, but this is a tricky issue, especially if you import items from catalogues...

adamsmith

However, by-item language settings apply to capitalisation rules, don't they?

only in the most basic sense that anything that's not English disables capitalization.

I'd disagree that the choice of specific quotation mark characters is part of an author's choice, but in any case -- as bwiernik says, this isn't possible currently and I don't think it's on the list for being implemented in the near future.

bwiernik

You are incorrect that choice of quote marks is not made by the publisher that quotes it. The large majority of publishers and style guides specify the formatting (quotes, etc.) that are used consistently with all items, regardless of their language.