[XeTeX] Whoever said quotation-marks are unimportant?

[Andrew Moschou]

As Will said, it is easy in English, but there are two methods, using one
set of marks for the first level and the other set for an inner level, and
(here in Australia) both are used, but I rarely (if ever) find double quote
marks used in publications. From Wikipedia:
'HAL said, "Good morning, Dave," ' recalled Frank.
"HAL said, 'Good morning, Dave,' " recalled Frank.
But I would write:
'HAL said, "Good morning, Dave.".', recalled Frank.
with the comma after the quote marks, and full stops (periods for the
Americans) before the end quote marks because the comma is not part of the
quotation (usual British practice), and there are three independent
sentences there, but others might not put the full stops in.

As Lillie said, the apostrophe/close single quote mark is used for
possession, which is universal in English. I think the confusion comes when
they're used not for quotes, but to indiciate 'strange' words that mean
something more than the literal meaning. I don't believe that there is any
typographical difference—both single and double quote marks are used in both
cases. I was taught to handwrite and to type using different practices
(double quotes handwriting, single quotes typing), but now always use single
quotes.

Unicode calls ` on left of the 1 on a US keyboard the grave accent. Other
sources indicate it is the open single quote mark (And I believe,
historically, this is the case, so Knuth wasn't so controversial in
restoring its function). It's a somewhat odd key on the keyboard.

I've only seen multiparagraph quotations with a new paragraph open quote
symbol without a closing symbol in the previous paragraph in newspapers.
Books would tend to use smaller size and perhaps with bigger margins without
any quote marks for such situations.

Andrew
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