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French punctuation in Pages

I wonder if anyone has seen the following problem already:

I just purchased Pages. I need to edit documents written in French. In French, quotation marks are not "" but two arrows, sort of like << and >>. Plus, there is a space after the open quote mark, e.g., << this quote >> and before the close quote.

Pages tells me that this sign is a form of a paragraph (in Special Characters). This is false.

Also, in French, colons and semi-colons and question marks have spaces before them, between the word and the punctuation mark.

Although I have gone through the Inspector in Pages to choose French as the language (Text + More + language), and also of course selected French as the language on the top right of the computer screen, still Pages will not apply French quotation marks or French punctuation.

Does this mean I have to go back to MS Word (which I would like to get away from)?

Je me demande si quelqu'un connaît la solution au problème suivant:

Je viens d'acheter Pages. Je travaille sur des documents écrits en français. En français, les guillemets ne sont pas des guillemets anglais "" mais des flèches << et >> . Qui plus est, il y a un espace après le guillemet ouvrant et avant le guillemet fermant.

Autre problème dans Pages: la ponctuation en français, pour le point-virgule et les deux points ( ; : ) et pour le point d'interrogation comporte un espace avant la marque de ponctuation.

Or, en dépit du choix de français comme langue dans Pages et la sélection du français en haut à droite de l'écran, Pages n'applique ni les guillemets français ni la ponctuation française.

Quelqu'un peut m'aider?

Merci d'avance.

Thomas

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Aug 8, 2009 4:35 AM

Best reply

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,188 points

Posted on Aug 8, 2009 5:16 AM

For French quotes, you need to be running Pages in French, either by setting the OS to French or doing File > Get Info > Languages on the Pages app icon and unchecking all boxes except French.

View in context

62 replies

Hellstan

Level 1

20 points

Aug 18, 2009 10:23 AM in response to Magnus Lewan

Magnus, fruhulda, again :

1. Preferences
2. Auto Correct
3. +
4. 1st column : Activity : checked
5. 2nd column : Replace : I type a semi-colon without any space before or after
6. 3d column : With : I type a semi-colon with a space before and after.
7. Close Preferences.
8. Create new document.
9. Type a phrase with a semi-colon.
10. Pages does NOT create any space before or after, un less a type "Enter".
Period.

May I add now I discussed the problem with Apple Support, who did reply to me that Pages could NOT create such an auto space.
I invite you to visit the french Apple Store and you'll find two long testimonies (excluding) mine stating it is NOT possible to create these auto spaces in french with Pages. 😉

Message was edited by: Hellstan

fruhulda

Level 6

15,161 points

Aug 18, 2009 10:51 AM in response to Hellstan

Well, to bad for you. I could do it with French version of Pages. I didn't try no-break space, just space.

By the way before you closed the Preferences, between #6 and #7 did you do anything more?

Message was edited by: fruhulda

Aug 18, 2009 10:50 AM in response to Hellstan

Hellstan wrote:
6. 3d column : With : I type a semi-colon with a space before and after.

Ok, try just using a space before. As fruhulda already stated, you will have to type something after the ; or : to make it work. As far as I know there is no example in French typography where you have a ; or : immediately followed by a letter.

As far as I can tell, the number of keystrokes is exactly the same in MS Word.

In MS Word you type "Il a dit le suivant" - exactly the same number of keystrokes as in Pages. Then you press ":". Now, in Word, you immediately get " :". In Pages you get only ":". This would be bad, if you did not intend to continue. But when you go on with " Monsieurs..." (beginning with a space), Word does not add more characters, but Pages correctly adds the space before ":", and in both cases you get the full phrase "Il a dit le suivant : Monsieurs" for exactly the same number of keystrokes.

Feel free to correct me, if I miss something.

Hellstan

Level 1

20 points

Aug 18, 2009 11:12 AM in response to Magnus Lewan

Dear Magnus,
As said, I tried under Pages EVERY solution (typing no space before and after, typing a space before and after, etc.).
I cannot joint attachments here, but I wold if you give me a valid email address.
You would see in my Pages Preferences that I did what I should do to make it work.
When typing my text, I obtain this :
Dfdfdfd : dffff
if I type manual space after the last "d" and if I type "Enter" after the ":".
If not, I obtain this :
Fdfdfdfdf:sddsd.

Please don't tell me : that's because you're not typing a real french word. 😉
I'm not missing anything. It simply doesn't work and Apple Support confirmed it.
Please read Yvan's last post.
In MSW, it's automatic.
I repeat :
In Pages, it works only when you type Enter.
I used and tried 4 different text processors.
The only one which creates the right french spaces
is MSW.
Not a pleasant situation, as MSW is a bag of bugs,
as we all know.

Message was edited by: Hellstan

Message was edited by: Hellstan

Aug 18, 2009 11:16 AM in response to Hellstan

Hellstan wrote:
I cannot joint attachments here, but I wold if you give me a valid email address.
You would see in my Pages Preferences that I did what I should do to make it work.

Just click on my name and you will find my courriel in the biography section.

Please, also specify exactly what it is that does not work. To me (and fruhulda), you will always want to type space or enter after a : or a ; in any valid French sentence. Both space and enter expand the : and ; in the setup I describe.

If you want to type ":allo" it will not work, but I cannot see any reason to follow a : by a letter. If you find a reason, please tell us what the reason is.

fruhulda

Level 6

15,161 points

Aug 18, 2009 11:20 AM in response to Hellstan

I have now change the computer language to French. I still can make auto correction add a space or eve a no break space before the semicolon. It works if you, when writing on the computer paper, type the ; then press space key, punctuation key or similar BUT not if you right away press a letter key or < key!
If you add a space in auto correction after the ; you will get double space after the ;. If you just write a letter you get nada!

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,188 points

Aug 18, 2009 11:57 AM in response to KOENIG Yvan

(1) : + noBreakSpace
(2) ; + noBreakSpace

Why would you test this? It's backwards. We are talking about noBreakSpace + ; and :

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,807 points

Aug 18, 2009 11:58 AM in response to Hellstan

Oops.

Why did I made tests with : + noBreakSpace and ; + noBreakSpace
when the required result is

noBreakSpace + :
and
noBreakSpace + ;

I got a consistent behavior:

noBreakSpace + :
noBreakSpace + ;
noBreakSpace + »

behave well

« + noBreakSpace

fail.

I get the same behavior with standard space.

I returned to my typography manual and now, autoCorrection is set accordingly:

shortNoBreakSpace ($202F) + :
shortNoBreakSpace ($202F) + ;
noBreakSpace + »
« + noBreakSpace

In practice, I must use Find/Replace to get the correct result for the «.

I replace
« + space by «
« + noBreakSpace by «
« by « + noBreakSpace.

Maybe, I will try to write a script driving Find/Replace to do the trick with a single command.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France.) mardi 18 août 2009 20:58:09

Aug 19, 2009 11:20 AM in response to Hellstan

Hellstan, I did not yet receive your mail. Was the problem solved somehow, or did you give up? It would be good to notify the people here who have tried to help you, if we managed to contribute to a solution that can be used by others too, or if you gave up.

Hellstan

Level 1

20 points

Aug 24, 2009 4:10 AM in response to Magnus Lewan

Dear Magnus,
In fact, it becomes stranger and stranger.
The automatic spacing works only when I type
an entire phrase, becing with a capital letter.
If I just type a series of words, it doesn't.
So apparently, Pages accepts to create this
spacing from "Preferences" when it recognizes
a full sentence.
Odd.

KOENIG Yvan

Level 8

41,807 points

Aug 24, 2009 6:39 AM in response to Hellstan

Dear Hellstan

It seems that we aren't running the same application 😉

I used the auto-correction tool.

I was just forced to insert the $202F character by hand between the opening chevrons and the word vous.

As far as I know, this is really not a true sentence.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France.) lundi 24 août 2009 15:39:09

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

116,188 points

Aug 24, 2009 7:19 AM in response to Hellstan

The automatic spacing works only when I type
an entire phrase, becing with a capital letter.

For me it works if I just type ; or : plus space.

Aug 29, 2009 11:33 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Tom Gewecke wrote:

These spaces between ":" and ";" are created automatically in Word, and not in Pages, or any other text application.

Can't you make Pages create them automatically via the auto-correction feature in its Preferences?

This blew up TextEdit for me in Snow Leopard: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2134293&tstart=0

Silly bug. I do not know if other people will have the same problem.

fruhulda

Level 6

15,161 points

Aug 29, 2009 11:50 PM in response to Magnus Lewan

I am now a 10.6 owner. I looked in the Language and Text part in SystemPreferences and among the smart quotation signs you can choose the French one we all have been discussing here!!!!

Aug 30, 2009 12:05 AM in response to fruhulda

fruhulda wrote:
I am now a 10.6 owner. I looked in the Language and Text part in SystemPreferences and among the smart quotation signs you can choose the French one we all have been discussing here!!!!

Yes, but they do not work with Pages. Apple continues writing two half-good word processors independent from each other: Pages and "the rest of the OS", i.e. TextEdit. For most of my needs TextEdit is better.

French punctuation in Pages