Re: International Punctuation

["Charlotte H. Jacobsen" <chjac -at- AMROSE -dot- SPO -dot- DK>]

>>>
-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Burns [mailto:BillDB -at- ILE -dot- COM]
Sent: Thursday, April 09, 1998 4:42 PM
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject: Re: International Punctuation


Kirk asks:

> I have a punctuation question that involves
> international readers.  Does anyone know if different
> cultures use either different punctuation marks than do
> American English speakers or if any cultures use "standard
> American punctuation marks" differently than American
> English speakers do?
>
Yep. The most notable have been mentioned. Rules for hyphenation also
vary
considerably. As  I understand, some languages (Finnish and Danish?) use
colons to form possessives. This creates an interesting issue for help
developers creating multi-level indices if they use colons instead of
commas
to separate main and sublevel entries.

<<<

We don't use colons to form possessives in Danish.

However, we use a full stop instead of a comma to divide thousands in
numbers. Example:

1.000  means one thousand

1,000 means one (exactly)

Charlotte.

___________________________________________
Charlotte H. Jacobsen
AMROSE A/S              chjac -at- amrose -dot- spo -dot- dk
Forskerparken 10        www.amrose.spo.dk
+5230 Odense M  Tel: +45 63 15 71 90
Denmark         Fax: +45 63 15 61 71