FOOTNOTES:
APPENDIX II
WORKS IN THE FRENCH LANGUAGE
The English compositor called upon to set works in the French language will do well, first of all, to make a careful examination of some examples from the best French printing-offices. He will find that French printers act on rules differing in many points from the rules to which the English compositor is accustomed; and he will not be able to escape from his difficulties by the simple expedient of ‘following copy’.
For works in the French language, such as classical text-books for use in schools, the English compositor generally gets reprint copy for text and manuscript for notes. It is, as a rule, safe for him to follow the reprint copy; but there is this difficulty, that when the work forms part of a series it does not always happen that the reprint copy for one book corresponds in typographical style with reprint copy for other works in the same series. Hence he should apply himself diligently to understand the following rules; and should hunt out examples of their application, so that they may remain in his memory.[76]
1. Capital and lower-case letters.—In the names of authors of the seventeenth century, which are preceded by an article, the latter should commence with a capital letter: La Fontaine, La Bruyère.[77] Exceptions are names taken from the Italian, thus: le Tasse, le Dante, le Corrège.[78] As to names of persons, the usage of the individuals themselves should be adopted: de la Bruyère (his signature at the end of a letter), De la Fontaine (end of fable ‘Le Lièvre et la Tortue’), Lamartine, Le Verrier, Maxime Du Camp. In names of places the article should be small: le Mans, le Havre, which the Académie adopts; la Ferté, with no hyphen after the article, but connected by a hyphen with different names of places, as la Ferté-sous-Jouarre.
Volumes, books, titles, acts of plays, the years of the Republican Calendar, are put in large capitals: An IV, acte V, tome VI; also numerals belonging to proper names: Louis XII; and the numbers of the arrondissements of Paris: le XVe arrondissement.
Scenes of plays, if there are no acts, are also put in large caps.: Les Précieuses ridicules, sc. V; also chapters, if they form the principal division: Joseph, ch. VI. If, however, scenes of plays and chapters are secondary divisions, they are put in small capitals: Le Cid, a. I, sc. II; Histoire de France, liv. VI, ch. VII. The numbers of centuries are generally put in small capitals: au XIXe (or XIXème) siècle.
The first word of a title always takes a capital letter: J’ai vu jouer Les Femmes savantes; on lit dans Le Radical. If a substantive in a title immediately follows Le, La, Les, Un, Une, it is also given a capital letter, thus: Les Précieuses ridicules. If the substantive is preceded by an adjective, this also receives a capital letter: La Folle Journée; if, however, the adjective follows, it is in lower-case: L’Âge ingrat. If the title commences with any other word than le, la, les, un, une, or an adjective, the words following are all in lower-case: De la terre à la lune; Sur la piste.
In titles of fables or of dramatic works the names of the characters are put with capital initials: Le Renard et les Raisins; Le Lion et le Rat; Marceau, ou les Enfants de la République.
In catalogues or indexes having the first word or words in parentheses after the substantive commencing the line, the first word thus transposed has a capital letter: Homme (Faiblesse de l’); Honneur (L’); Niagara (Les Chutes du).
If the words in parentheses are part of the title of a work, the same rule is followed as to capitals as above given: Héloïse (La Nouvelle); Mort (La Vie ou la).
The words saint, sainte, when referring to the saints themselves, have, except when commencing a sentence, always lower-case initials: saint Louis, saint Paul, sainte Cécile. But when referring to names of places, feast-days, &c., capital letters and hyphens are used: Saint-Domingue, la Saint-Jean. (See also, as to abbreviations of Saint, Sainte, [p. 82].)
I. Use capital letters as directed below:
(1) Words relating to God: le Seigneur, l’Être suprême, le Très-Haut, le Saint-Esprit.
(2) In enumerations, if each one commences a new line, a capital is put immediately after the figure:
1o L’Europe.
2o L’Asie, &c.
But if the enumeration is run on, lower-case letters are used: 1o l’Europe, 2o l’Asie, &c.
(3) Words representing abstract qualities personified: La Renommée ne vient souvent qu’après la Mort.
(4) The planets and constellations: Mars, le Bélier.
(5) Religious festivals: la Pentecôte.
(6) Historical events: la Révolution.
(7) The names of streets, squares, &c.: la rue des Mauvais-Garçons, la place de la Nation, la fontaine des Innocents.
(8) The names of public buildings, churches, &c.: l’Opéra, l’Odéon, église de la Trinité.
(9) Names relating to institutions, public bodies, religious, civil, or military orders (but only the word after the article): l’Académie française, la Légion d’honneur, le Conservatoire de musique.
(10) Surnames and nicknames, without hyphens: Louis le Grand.
(11) Honorary titles: Son Éminence, Leurs Altesses.
(12) Adjectives denoting geographical expressions: la mer Rouge, le golfe Persique.
(13) The names of the cardinal points designating an extent of territory: l’Amérique du Nord; aller dans le Midi. (See II. (2).)
(14) The word Église, when it denotes the Church as an institution: l’Église catholique; but when relating to a building église is put.
(15) The word État when it designates the nation, the country: La France est un puissant État.
II. Use lower-case initials for—
(1) The names of members of religious orders: un carme (a Carmelite), un templier (a Templar). But the orders themselves take capitals: l’ordre des Templiers, des Carmes.
(2) The names of the cardinal points: le nord, le sud. But see I. (13) above.
(3) Adjectives belonging to proper names: la langue française, l’ère napoléonienne.
(4) Objects named from persons or places: un quinquet (an argand lamp); un verre de champagne.
(5) Days of the week—lundi, mardi; names of months—juillet, août.
In plays the dramatis personae at the head of scenes are put in large capitals, and those not named in even small capitals:
SCÈNE V.
TRIBOULET, BLANCHE, HOMMES,
FEMMES DU PEUPLE.
In the dialogues the names of the speakers are put in even small capitals, and placed in the centre of the line. The stage directions and the asides are put in smaller type, and are in the text, if verse, in parentheses over the words they refer to. If there are two stage directions in one and the same line, it will be advisable to split the line, thus:
(Revenu sur ses pas.)
Oublions-les! restons.—
(Il l’assied sur un banc.)
Sieds-toi sur cette pierre.
Directions not relating to any particular words of the text are put, if short, at the end of the line:
Celui que l’on croit mort n’est pas mort.—
Le voici!
(Étonnement général.)
2. Accented Capitals.—With one exception accents are to be used with capital letters in French. The exception is the grave accent on the capital letter A in such lines as—
A la porte de la maison, &c.;
A cette époque, &c.;
and in display lines such as—
FÉCAMP A GENÈVE
MACHINES A VAPEUR.
In these the preposition A takes no accent; but we must, to be correct, print Étienne, Étretat; and DÉPÔT, ÉVÊQUE, PRÉVÔT in cap. lines.[79] Small capitals should be accented throughout, there being no fear of the grave accent breaking off.
3. The Grave and Acute Accents.—There has been an important change in recent years as to the use of the grave and acute accents in French. It has become customary to spell with a grave accent (`) according to the pronunciation, instead of with an acute accent (´), certain words such as collège (instead of collége), avènement (instead of avénement), &c. The following is a list of the most common:
allège
l’Ariège
arpège
avènement
barège
collège
le Corrège
cortège
évènement
florilège
grège
lège
Liège, liège[80]
manège
mège
la Norvège or Norwège
piège
privilège
sacrilège
sacrilègement
siège
solfège
sortilège
sphège[81]
4. Hyphens.—Names of places containing an article or the prepositions en, de, should have a hyphen between each component part, thus: Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Saint-Valery-en-Caux, although the Académie leaves out the last two hyphens.
Names of places, public buildings, or streets, to which one or more distinguishing words are added, take hyphens: Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, Vitry-le-François, rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, le Pont-Neuf, le Palais-Royal, l’Hôtel-de-la-Monnaie.
In numbers hyphens are used to connect quantities under 100: e.g. vingt-quatre; trois cent quatre-vingt-dix; but when et joins two cardinal numbers no hyphen is used, e.g. vingt et un; cinquante et un. But print vingt-et-unième.
5. Spacing.—No spaces to be put before the ‘points de suspension’, i.e. three points close together, cast in one piece, denoting an interruption (...). In very wide spacing a thin space may be put before a comma,[82] or before or after a parenthesis or a bracket. Colons, metal-rules, section-marks, daggers, and double-daggers take a space before or after them exactly as words. Asterisks and superior figures, not enclosed in parentheses, referring to notes, take a thin or middle space before them. Points of suspension are always followed by a space. For guillemets see [pp. 86, 87].
A space is put after an apostrophe following a word of two or more syllables (as a Frenchman reckons syllables, e.g. bonne is a word of two syllables):—
Bonn’ petite... Aimabl’ enfant!...
Spaces are put in such a case as 10 h. 15 m. 10 s. (10 hours 15 min. 10 sec.), also printed 10h 15m 10s.
Chemical symbols are not spaced, thus C10H12(OH)CO.OH.
6. Awkward divisions: abbreviated words and large numbers expressed in figures.—One should avoid ending a line with an apostrophe, such as: Quoi qu’ | il dise?
If a number expressed in figures is too long to be got into a line, or cannot be taken to the next without prejudice to the spacing, a part of the number should be put as a word, thus: 100 mil- | lions.
7. Division of words.—Words should be divided according to syllables, as in what the French call épellation (i.e. syllabication). Therefore a consonant should never be separated from the vowel following. Thus divide: amou-reux, cama-rade; and always take over vr: li-vraison. If a consonant is doubled, the consonants may be divided: mil-lion, pil-lard, in-nocent. It is optional to divide ob-scurité or obs-curité, according to convenience. Vowels are divided only in compound words: e.g. extra-ordinaire; not Mo-abite, mo-yen.
In compound words an apostrophe may be divided from a consonant following; thus: grand’-mère, grand’-route.
Divide sei-gneur, indi-gnité (gn pronounced as ni in ‘mania’), i.e. take gn over.
The following divisions should be avoided: Ma-ximilien, soi-xante, Me-xique; é-légant. In a narrow measure a syllable of two letters may stand at the end of a line: ce-pendant, in-décis; but a syllable of two letters must not be taken over to the next line; therefore élégan-ce, adversi-té, are not permissible; but élégan-ces, mar-que, abri-cot, are tolerated.
Avoid terminating a paragraph with only the final syllable of a word in the last line.
Verbs taking the so-called euphonic t should always be divided before the latter, thus: Viendra- | t-il?
Avoid dividing abbreviated words.
Etymological division finds no favour in French, unless it is in accord with épellation, or syllabication, as in trans-porter, trans-poser. But divide transi-tion, transi-ger.
Mute syllables may be turned over to the next line, thus: ils mar-quent, les hom-mes.
8. Abbreviations.—Such words as article, chapitre, scène, titre, figure, are abbreviated only when in parentheses, as references; in the text they are put in full. If, in works divided into articles, the first article is put in full (thus: Article premier), those that follow may be in figures and abbreviated (as Art. 2).
Saint, sainte, when they occur very often, as in religious works, may be abbreviated, taking a capital letter: S. Louis, Ste Marie. But not when they form part of the name of a place, e.g. Saint-Germain-des-Prés; in which case Saint- and Sainte- take a capital and are followed by a hyphen.[83] (See also [p. 75].)
The words monsieur, madame, monseigneur, messeigneurs, messieurs, mesdames, mademoiselle, mesdemoiselles, are written in full and all in lower-case when addressing a person: Oui, madame; Non, monsieur le duc. Also in the following instances: J’espère que monseigneur viendra; j’ai vu monsieur votre père. In most other cases M. (for monsieur), Mme (for madame), Mgr. or Mgr (for monseigneur), and so on, are used. The words Sa Majesté, Son Éminence, Leurs Altesses, when followed by another title, are put as initials, thus S. M. l’Empereur; but not otherwise.
The name Jésus-Christ is abbreviated only when in parentheses after a date, thus: (337 avant J.-C.). This is more frequently printed 337 A.J.C.
Other examples of abbreviations:
| liv. | (livre) | etc. | (et cætera) |
| ch. | (chapitre) | c.-à-d. | (c’est-à-dire) |
| t. | (tome) | Cie | (compagnie) |
| do | (ditto) | Dr | (docteur) |
| fo | (folio) | Me | (maître) |
| in-fo | (in-folio) | Mlle | (mademoiselle) |
| in-8o | (in-octavo) | N.-S. J.-C. | (Notre-Seigneur |
| in-4o | (in-quarto) | Jésus-Christ) | |
| ms. | (manuscrit) | Cte | (comte) |
| mss. | (manuscrits) | Mis | (marquis) |
| no | (numéro) | Vve | (veuve) |
| P.-S. | (post-scriptum) | S.A. | (Son Altesse) |
| Ier } | (premier) | LL. AA. II. | (Leurs Altesses |
| 1er } | Impériales) | ||
| II, 2e | (deuxième) | ||
| Abbreviations of metric signs: | |||
| [84]Mm. | (myriamètre) | t. | (tonne) |
| [{84}]Km. | (kilomètre) | q. | (quintal métrique) |
| [{84}]Hm. | (hectomètre) | kg. | (kilogramme) |
| dam. | (décamètre) | hg. | (hectogramme) |
| m. | (mètre) | dag. | (décagramme) |
| dm. | (décimètre) | g. | (gramme) |
| cm. | (centimètre) | dg. | (décigramme) |
| mq. | (mètre carré) | cg. | (centigramme) |
| mm. | (millimètre) | mg. | (milligramme) |
| mmq. | (millimètre carré) | kl. | (kilolitre) |
| mmc. | (millimètre cube) | hl. | (hectolitre) |
| ha. | (hectare) | dal. | (décalitre) |
| a. | (are) | l. | (litre) |
| ca. or m2. | (centiare) | dl. | (décilitre) |
| das. | (décastère) | cl. | (centilitre) |
| s. or m3. | (stère) | ml. | (millilitre) |
| ds. | (décistère) | ||
Put: 20 francs, 20 mètres, 20 litres, 20 milligrammes. If, however, followed by fractions, then put—20 fr. 50, or 20fr,50; 20 m. 50, or 20m,50; 20 l. 50, or 20l,50; 20 kilog. 5, or 20kilo,5.
In works crowded with figures, one can even put—0m,5 for 5 décimètres; 0m,15 for 15 centimètres; 0m,008 for 8 millimètres.
The cubic metre followed by a fraction is given thus: 4mc,005 or 4m3,005 (= 4 mètres cubes 5 millimètres cubes); the square metre thus: 4mq,05 or 4m2,05 (= 4 mètres carrés 5 décimètres carrés).
The French use a decimal comma instead of a decimal point—2,3 = 2·3.
The words kilogrammes, kilomètres, and kilogrammètres, followed by fractions, are given thus: 50 kg. 3 or 50kg,3; 5 km. 3 or 5km,3; 2 kgm. 4 or 2kgm,4.
Per cent. is generally put 0/0, but pour 100, p. 100, and % are also used. In business letters pour cent is always pour %, e.g. A trente jours, 3 pour % d’escompte.
9. Numerals.—When cardinal numbers are expressed in Roman lower-case letters, the final unit should be expressed by a j, not an i, thus: ij, iij, vj, viij.
Numbers are put in full if only occasionally occurring in the text. If used statistically, figures are used.
Degrees of temperature are generally given thus: 15°, 15 (in English 15° 15′).
Age or the time of day must be given in full: huit ans, six heures (eight years, six o’clock).
Dates, figures, &c., are put in full in legal documents: l’an mil neuf cent quatre (the year one thousand nine hundred and four).
One should not put ‘de 5 à 6,000 hommes’, but ‘de 5,000 à 6,000 hommes’.
Commas in figures are used as in English, thus: 20,250 fr. 25 or 20,250fr,25. But dates, and numbers in general, are always put without a comma: l’année 1466; page 1250; Code civil, art. 2000.
Fractions with a horizontal stroke are preferred in mathematical and scientific works; but in ordinary works the diagonal stroke is used, thus: 1/2, 2/3 (½, ⅔).
In logarithm tables the fractional part of a logarithm is printed with spaces, thus: Log. 2670 = 3, 426 5113; and also: Log. 2670 = 3, 4 265 113.
10. Roman and italic.—In algebraical formulae the capital letters are always put in roman and the small letters in italic. If, however, the text is in italic, the small letters are put in roman type.
The titles of works, of plays, of journals, names of ships, of statues, and titles of tables mentioned in the text, are put in italic; thus: La pièce La Chatte blanche; J’ai vu Les Rois en exil; On lit dans Le Figaro; le journal Le Temps; le transport Bien-Hoa.
Foreign words[85] and quotations are, as in English, italicized: Agir ab irato; Cave canem! lisait-on....
Superior letters in words italicized should be in italic, thus: Histoire de Napoléon Ier.
11. Reference figures.—References to notes are generally rendered thus: (1), or thus: 1. Sometimes an asterisk between parentheses (*) or standing alone *, or italic superior letters (a), are used. The second example (1) is the best from the English point of view.
The figure in the note itself is put either 1. or (1) or 1. In many works the reference figure is put 1, and the note-figure 1.
12. Metal-rules.—These serve in French to denote conversational matter, and take a thick space (or more, if necessary) after them. In fact, metal-rules, as in German, always have a space before or after, and are never put close to a word as in English. They are likewise never put after colons.
They are also used to give more force to a point: Il avait un cœur d’or, — mais une tête folle; et vraiment, — je puis le dire, — il était d’un caractère très agréable.
They are likewise used, as in English, for intercalations: Cette femme — étrangère sans doute — était très âgée.
13. Quotation marks.—The French use special quotation marks « » (called guillemets). A guillemet is repeated at the head of every subsequent paragraph belonging to the quotation.
In conversational matter, guillemets are sometimes put at the commencement and end of the remarks, and the individual utterances are denoted by a metal-rule (with a space after). But it is more common to dispense with guillemets altogether, and to denote the commencement of the conversation by only a metal-rule. This is an important variation from the English method.
If the » comes after points de suspension, a middle space is put before and after it:
La cour a décrété qu’ « attendu l’urgence... » .
If, in dialogues, a passage is quoted, the « is put before the metal-rule:
« — Demain, à minuit, nous sortirons enfin! »
In tables and workings the » is used to denote an absent quantity:
| 125 . 15 | 130 » |
| 10 » | 15 . 25 |
If a sentence contains a citation, the point at the end of the latter is put before the », and the point belonging to the sentence after:
« Prenez garde au chien! » , lisait-on à l’entrée des maisons romaines.
If the matter quoted ends with a full stop, and a comma follows in the sentence, the full stop is suppressed:
« C’est par le sang et par le fer que les États grandissent » , a dit Bismarck.
Also, if the point at the end of the citation is a full stop, and the sentence ends with a note of interrogation or exclamation, the full stop is suppressed:
A-t-il dit: « Je reviendrai » ?
If citation and sentence end with the same point, or if the sentence ends with a full stop, only the citation is pointed:
Quel bonheur d’entendre: « Je vous aime! »
A-t-il dit: « Qui est ici? »
Il a dit: « Je viendrai. »
But if the punctuation of the citation differs from that of the sentence, both points are put:—
A-t-il dit: « Quel grand malheur! » ?
Guillemets should have before and after them the same space as between words.
In the case of a citation within a citation, the « must stand at the commencement of each line of the enclosed citation:
On lit dans Le Radical: « Une malheureuse erreur a été commise par un de nos artistes du boulevard. Ayant à dire: « Mademoiselle, je ne « veux qu’un mot de vous! » , il a fait entendre ces paroles: « Mademoiselle, je ne veux qu’un mou de « veau! »
In passages quoted down the side put an en quad after the « commencing each line.
Only one » is put at the end of two citations ending simultaneously.