[bksvol-discuss] Re: apostrophe as single quote
- From: "Sarah Van Oosterwijck" <curiousentity@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2006 10:33:43 -0600
Cindy,
Oops, and I am not of much use when it comes to describing
characters. In this case because I forgot that the accent is just like an
opening single quote not like a closing or apostrophe. I knew that, but not
being able to look at the key when writing allowed me to mess up. <smile>
Thanks for correcting me, so that people did not continue to be in a
misinformed state. :-)
Single quotes are really a more elegant set of characters to use, but
apostrophes throughout electronic texts whether for single quotes or
apostrophes will be much safer for conversion to speech and braille, at least
for the time being. The single quotes might really be better for some people,
but it would be really asking a lot for people to go through books making sure
that every single character was represented correctly and beginning quotes,
ending quotes, and apostrophes were never improperly interchanged. Since I'm
sure you used Word to work on the books you mentioned, all apostrophes you
wrote were turned in to single closing quotes without your knowledge or
permission. You must turn off "use smart quotes" in order to have complete
control over your document.
When it comes to automatic translation in to braille, no matter what we do
something is likely to be a bit messed up, so if we need perfection we need
human transcribers.
Sarah Van Oosterwijck
Assistive Technology Trainer
http://home.earthlink.net/~netentity
----- Original Message -----
From: Cindy
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 7:16 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: apostrophe as single quote
Sarah,
I had to laugh, as your first paragraph describes me
perfectly. I'm always looking at the food ads on TV or
descriptions of food even without seeing them and
saying "Mmmm--that looks/sounds so good."
But on my keyboard, the grave symbol goes the opposite
way of an apostrophe.
I've learned that what I see and use doesn't apply
often to what you all use and I keep telling myself
to stay out of the discussion, but then if no one has
answered yes, I do throw in my two-cents worth, which
turns up to be ab out as useful as wooden nickels.
smile
But you comment in the second paragraph about the
single quotes and apostrophes we see not being the
same when translated into formats that you can read
creates a dilemma. What is the alternative? Are the
symbols I discovered in the Insert file what I should
use for for single quotes? I'm guessing the ansswer is
Yes, and I should use the keyboard symbol only for
apostrophes. I never noticed those before and would
not have had not Robin or whoever it was just asked
the question.
Thank you both.
Cindy
--- Sarah Van Oosterwijck
<curiousentity@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Ah sighted people, smile> Especially the not
> particularly computer literate ones, can really
> cause more confusion then good when asked about
> characters you wish to create or eliminate from
> electronic documents. <smile> I'm not really
> criticizing them, since they just don't happen to
> know much about the topic, but I'm warning you that
> their advice can not always be trusted. Kurzweil
> and to some degree your screen reader, knows much
> more about the document than can be learned by a
> sighted person looking at the printed characters on
> the screen or in the book. They are kind of like
> that plastic or wax food they see in pictures in the
> menus they consult and then announce, "Mmm, that
> looks so good, I think I'll have that." I'd find it
> so hilarious if they were actually brought the prop
> material that was actually used in the picture. LOL
>
> The accent mark on the key above the tab is not the
> slightest bit related to an apostrophe or a single
> quote. It just happens to be a mark that curves in
> the same direction as an apostrophe. Sighted people
> also have no problems with closing single quotes and
> apostrophes being used interchangeably because they
> really do look the same, but as you have already
> learned they are not always the best thing for the
> electronic copy of the book, because they are really
> different characters and will not necessarily be
> read or transcribed correctly.
> Why not just select the offensive character and copy
> it to the clipboard. Paste it in the find box and
> replace all of them with an apostrophe. If for some
> reason you don't like that plan then you can produce
> a single close quote at will by pressing and holding
> down the alt key while typing the number 0146 on the
> numb-pad. Kurzweil will call it close single quote,
> so you will know it is correct. JAWS and open book
> users won't be informed of the difference between
> the characters, so only the character number can
> warn you of the difference as apostrophe is
> character 39 not character 146. It's useful that
> JAWS doesn't differentiate while reading a file, but
> it isn't so good that Open Book decides to use them
> interchangeably like Word.
>
> If anyone has more questions about character
> problems then please go to Jake's tip page and read
> the tip I submitted about potential problem
> characters. The information can also be quite
> useful to people who transfer documents to a note
> taker for reading in braille, since the same
> characters often cause issues for them.
>
> I really want to make a Word macro for fixing up
> documents for transfer to my BrailleNote, but I've
> lost every macro I've ever made for Word, so I'm not
> too enthused about the prospect.
>
> Sarah Van Oosterwijck
> Assistive Technology Trainer
> http://home.earthlink.net/~netentity
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