[texhax] substituting the right keyboard symbols for quote marks

Donald Arseneau asnd at triumf.ca
Mon Oct 19 12:08:12 CEST 2009


"P. R. Stanley" <prstanley at ntlworld.com> writes:
> >You might even see `" and '" being used.
> 
> Paul: what effects do they produce? Are they single quotes, double quotes,
> opening, closing ...?

I don't think you will see, errrm encounter, those combinations,
but rather "` and "'.  That would be with LaTeX plus the babel package
where the language support for some languages makes the double-quote
character active, and uses it as a prefix to generate all sorts of 
special characters or even hyphenation points.  For example, german
support makes "` a german left lowered quote, which looks like
,, (comma comma).

> Paul: I'm looking at plain Tex right now.
> So, let me recap:
> `` produces a double left quote;
> ` a single left quote;
> '' a double right quote;
> ' a single right quote

Yes.

So you're not going to get the LaTeX babel specials in plain TeX,
where the double quote is a plain character.  In the plain "cm"
fonts, it corresponds to a double right quote, but other fonts
have a double upright (symmetric) quote in that character
position.


-- 
Donald Arseneau                          asnd at triumf.ca


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