Typophile

Typesetting in German (redux)

rjohnston

I have to typeset a bunch of stuff bilingual in German and English at the moment and have some questions (which weren't entirely answered in this thread). All help appreciated.

N.B. -- this could be complicated by the fact that the audience is Swiss (Basel), and I understand there are some peculiarities there regarding the use of guillemets instead of the standard German quote marks ... anyway:

1) My particular concerns are the citing of the titles of artworks, books etc. In English, I set titles of works, books, films etc. italic, and I set titles of exhibitions, journals, articles etc. in single quotes.

Everything (like, everything I mentioned above) in the translated texts I've received seems to be set in double German quotes (with the 'low nines' left and 'high sixes' right), which make the page very gappy. Is it familiar/acceptable to use italics or single quotes for any of these purposes in German?

2) With ref to the Swiss thing, I've read that it's common in Switzerland to use guillemets instead of quotes. But would that be the German ones (facing 'inwards') or the French style (facing 'outwards')? And only for speech, or for the things I mentioned above also? I guess the intent is that German, Italian and French texts are set the same way?

Sorry to be so dumb. I promise I've ordered a copy of Der Duden (see link above). But it's going to take 4-6 weeks to arrive.

Rob

Andreas Seidel

If you read my previews text, it have all the info you need. ;-)

The Italic thing is ok, but don't use single quotes (out of the double quotes content) in a professional text. If you find it ugly, guillemets are quite good in German too and its common for your Swiss audience. But note the difference in the directions for the German usage of guillemets. ;-)

If you have to deal with other languages too, you should prefer the guillemets.

BTW. The Duden is a German only book. An english version like the Oxford-Duden German Dictionary should you serve better - but its only a thought.

rjohnston

Andreas -- to clarify:

1) It's common and acceptable to set, e.g., titles of artwork in a German text in italic?

2) I can substitute guillemets (>> << version) for double quotes throughout? Or only for speech?

Thanks,

Rob

Andreas Seidel

1. common? But its usefull if you have to deal with different languages and want an uniform look.

2. yes, throughout. But since your main audience are Swiss people, you should prefer

rjohnston

Thanks Andreas, that helps a lot.

R

HD Schellnack

Yeah, Italics for titles of artwork, music, films etc. are quite common and much less of a pain than constant quote marks.

In German the Guillemets are reversed, like this:

Captured from web.archive.org on 24 Feb 2013. view this capture