I was in this storm as a one-year-old baby in a trailer home in Slidell LA.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Quotation marks versus capitalization
In German, nouns are capitalized whether they are proper or not. In order to distinguish between a proper noun and a common noun, Germans are forced to put their already capitalized noun in quotation marks.
In English, we can distinguish between an action plan and a Action Plan with simple capitalization, however. Our quotation marks serve a different purpose – signifying that we don't quite believe the word, a bit in the way we might say something like "so-called friends."
The result, when Germans write in English, is quotation marks around nouns already marked as proper by means of capital letters.
Today, I see that my translator colleague Jill Sommer has posted a nice cartoon along these lines.
In English, we can distinguish between an action plan and a Action Plan with simple capitalization, however. Our quotation marks serve a different purpose – signifying that we don't quite believe the word, a bit in the way we might say something like "so-called friends."
The result, when Germans write in English, is quotation marks around nouns already marked as proper by means of capital letters.
Today, I see that my translator colleague Jill Sommer has posted a nice cartoon along these lines.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)