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Je n'ai pas vraiment d'opinon au sujet de l'utilisation systématique des « citations » en français ou des “quotes” en anglais. Cependant, citer un mot de cette façon est vraiment moche.

On remarquera aussi la différence entre:

De jolies citations.

et:

Ces morceaux de texte affreux.

Quelles mesures doit-on prendre?

I don't have much an opinion on how strict we should be about « citations » in French and “quoting” in English. However quoting a word as this is really ugly.

Also, notice the difference between:

Nice quotes.

and:

Such terrible chunks of text.

What should we do about this?

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
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Since the "code" formatting was meant for technical chunks, I think we could write IPA like /ðɪs/, keep

blockquotes

for large chunks of texts and use emphasized text for inline, well, emphases on small chunks.

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Je suis pour l'interdiction pure et simple des blocs de code, lorsque des mots ou des phrases sont cités.

Ils restent acceptables pour la ponctuation, comme ;, et éventuellement dans d'autres cas très particuliers : phonétique, du vrai code, etc…

I'm in favor of banishing code blocks that are used to quote words or sentences.

Those would be acceptable for punctuation like ;, and maybe in other very specific cases only: phonetics, real code, etc…

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  • Et que penses-tu de l'exemple d'Evpok, en ce qui concerne l'API? What do you think about Evpok's example relating to the IPA?
    – Brennan Vincent
    Commented Aug 18, 2011 at 15:37
  • Ça tombe justement dans les « cas particuliers » acceptables, voire recommandés ;-) Tant que c'est pas des mots ou du texte, 'ya pas de mal :-)
    – Stéphane Gimenez
    Commented Aug 18, 2011 at 15:44
  • Dans ce cas, je suis d'accord avec toi, mais il faudrait peut-être être plus précis dans ta réponse (i.e. dire autre chose à la place de "je suis pour son interdiction pure et simple) :)
    – Brennan Vincent
    Commented Aug 18, 2011 at 15:45
  • @Brennan, merci pour la suggestion.
    – Stéphane Gimenez
    Commented Aug 18, 2011 at 16:16
  • Peut Être pour l'API on peut avoir un privilège pour plus que 200 rep? Perhaps for the IPA case you can have a privilege for more than 200 rep?
    – Flexo - Save the data dump
    Commented Aug 20, 2011 at 10:38
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I did not know whether to start a new discussion or continue here. Since it's partially related to original post I'll try it here and see if it gets an answer.

Italics or bold don't work when wanting to emphasize a letter or a group of letters within a word. I did not find a solution in that answer when I wanted to emphasize the letters that represent the sounds.

Italiques et gras ne marchent pas pour mettre en relief une ou plusieurs lettres à l'intérieur d'un mot.

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    There is a trick, but it's a bit tedious, which is to use th<em>i</em>s and th<strong>a</strong>t. But it doesn't work in comments it seems :-( Only in questions and answers.
    – Stéphane Gimenez
    Commented Dec 20, 2011 at 11:08
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    Oh, and BTW, I think this is mostly unrelated to the original question. Why would it be?
    – Stéphane Gimenez
    Commented Dec 20, 2011 at 11:13
  • À moi aussi, ça me semble mériter sa propre question, et réponse, mais il me semble que j'avais réussi à le faire marcher …
    – Nikana Reklawyks
    Commented Oct 13, 2012 at 15:35
  • There is another trick, that use invisible characters like U+200B to separate the stars from the rest of the word. But given the issues with unicode on some configs it might not be the best way to do it.
    – Evpok
    Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:43
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The inline quoting like this for one or two words that are being emphasized in a sentence doesn't have much of an alternative. I suppose you could bold the word but it might stand out less.

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    You can put the word in italics.
    – Brennan Vincent
    Commented Aug 18, 2011 at 15:45
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    Same as Vincent says: Italics or quotes or both seem to work just fine.
    – Joubarc
    Commented Aug 19, 2011 at 7:44
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Personally, I think that if this site is to be about helping people who have legitimate questions about French language and usage, then we need to be careful about introducing the snobbery that is traditionally associated with francophiles.

Having spent a lot of time studying French literature and language in American universities, it is the use of judgmental words such as moche and affreux that turn Americans off of what I spent more than half of my life learning, loving, and perfecting.

The Stack Exchange network is still generally populated by technical people who won't see the code blocks as ugly, or as abnormal even. Attempting to ban them, will ultimately end up in turning people off.

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    I personally disagree. Code blocks are user for codes or short things. But if you need to quote something long, use a "Quote block". It seems rather natural and it has nothing to do with snobbery.
    – Alenanno
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 11:42
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    This has absolutely nothing to do with snobbery, French or otherwise. This site is not oriented towards technical people, it's open to anyone who wants to ask or answer questions about French. There's no attempt to ban anything. Improving posts, whether it's to correct minor factual errors, to rectify spelling or grammatical mistakes, or to improve typography and general presentation, is an explicit goal of Stack Exchange in general.
    – Gilles 'SO nous est hostile'
    Commented Aug 24, 2011 at 16:50
  • I suppose I should have posted this as a comment to the answer that starts with "Je suis pour l'interdiction pure et simple des blocs de code", which is talking about banning things. I absolutely agree that quote blocks should be used for quotes. However I have seen on other SE sites where people are chastised somewhat unfairly for not getting it right. Correcting people's misusage of the SE tools is absolutely cool, but the original question comes off as extremely judgmental, and some of the answers do talk about banning usage of certain features.
    – Kirk
    Commented Aug 25, 2011 at 14:53
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    Moreover, Markdown will try to apply syntax highlighting in code blocks.
    – Stamm
    Commented Dec 7, 2011 at 15:24

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