is it semantically sensible to put quotation marks inside quotations

I mean like <q>&quot;here is a quotation&quot;</q>

Visually it looks nicer, but maybe it's not quite right - because the <q> already implies the quotation marks. Maybe something like

<i>&quot;</i><q>here is a quotation</q><i>&quot;</i>

would be better - visually the same, but makes more sense semantically ..

Any thoughts on this, or HTML semantics generally?

visually, <q> means nothing, i say place the quotation marks inside the tag, i would only use the tag for CSS purposes.
i dont think " would matter, although its somewhat redundant

Or you could define a style for the <q> tag:

q { quotes: '"' '"' "'" "'"; }

oh yea i forgot about that one
it supports before and after pseudo's so you could say ....
this is all very new i believe

q:before {content:open-quote;}
q:after {content:close-quote;}

Originally posted by cg9com
oh yea i forgot about that one
it supports before and after pseudo's so you could say ....
this is all very new i believe

q:before {content:open-quote;}
q:after {content:close-quote;}

Not any newer than the rest of CSS2.

well what I have is q styled the same as italics, so its visually the same but semantically different

.. but Lynx (and so I'm guessing others) automatically parses <q> elements and create quotation marks - end result is two pairs either end!

But there's some interesting answers here -

q { quotes: '"' '"' "'" "'"; }
q:before {content:open-quote;}
q:after {content:close-quote;}

I've never heard of "quotes" or "content" as properties either - what's kind of parameters do they tale ?

I've never heard of pseduo-classes either (god I feel like there's much of this stuff I don't know about ... this is what happens when you spend 2 years maintaing a commercial API at the expense of the rest of your life ... )

I shall have to investigate all this; thanks for the leads :thumbsup:

content:text|url(...)|open-quote|close-quote|

i think thats all of them, before and after are the only pseudos in the <q> i believe ...

According to the W3C HTML 4.01 Recommendation (http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/),
Visual user agents must ensure that the content of the Q element is rendered with delimiting quotation marks. Authors should not put quotation marks at the beginning and end of the content of a Q element.
see Quotations: The BLOCKQUOTE and Q elements (http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html#edef-Q).
It says UAs should render quotes, which doesn't mean that they actually do. Sounds like another great opportunity for browser hacks... :rolleyes:

Originally posted by ronaldb66
Sounds like another great opportunity for browser hacks... :rolleyes:

Oh wonderful ... just what I want! I think some testing is in order - providing the majority of browsers don't already add the markes, then the pseudo class thing will work inside @media groups (to block out ns4). otherwise I'll just leave it ...

hmm ... opera7 and mozilla add the marks automatically ... but ie6 doesn't ... and it doesn't seem to support the pseudo-class either ... why am I not surprised by this ...

I believe the intention of the Q tag was to provide a language-independent way of rendering quotations. For example, in English you can use the " character (or alternatively, the open and close quote characters shaped kind of like commas) while French uses guillemets (« and » ) and German uses high and low quote characters (“ and „ ).

Originally posted by brothercake
hmm ... opera7 and mozilla add the marks automatically ... but ie6 doesn't ... and it doesn't seem to support the pseudo-class either ... why am I not surprised by this ...

because its IE and they take longer than everyone else.
theres alot of things i would do, but never could because IE doesnt support it, and lets face it, if IE doesnt support it, over half of internet users wont see it and/or get errors

Originally posted by BrainJar
I believe the intention of the Q tag was to provide a language-independent way of rendering quotations ...

Yeah that makes a lot of sense; clearly the right thing to do then is not put marks inside the Q, and just don't worry that IE doesn't render it correctly - the italics + context will be enough that it's obvious what it is.