RE: quotation marks [was Re: TUTORIAL.de updated]

[Drew Adams]

> > (BTW, are there any plans to stop that abuse of the grave 
> > accent as an opening quotation mark in the rest of the
> > documentation?

I certainly hope not.  Quite misguided, IMO.

> http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=10443
> It will be a hard habit to change.

It is not just a question of habit.  Having different characters for starting
and ending such text simplifies distinguishing that text (e.g. font-locking).

Which start and end chars are conventionally chosen for this is not nearly as
important as the fact that they be different.

The URL that Glenn cites gives this as the (only) rationale for changing:

  This proposed patch follows up on recent changes to the
  GNU coding standards.  They now suggest that we should
  quote 'like this' or "like this" instead of `like this'; see
  <http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Quote-Characters.html>.

Such a change to "the GNU coding standards" might or might not make sense for C
coding (that is the only context cited where "the GNU coding standards" have
been changed in this regard).

But it definitely does not make sense for Emacs, IMO.  `...' is an Emacs doc &
UI convention, not simply a "coding standard".