Yesterday there was a discussion on
the CE-L about adapting the
APA style to French theses. Somehow, the question of spacing and punctuation came up, and someone made the claim that in French typography, “there are hard spaces within parentheses ( like this )”.
I’m not French native or even French fluent, but I did pass my
B1 exam and have read my share of French books and magazines, and honestly I couldn’t remember
ever seeing hard spaces within parentheses. But I could just be ignorant, right?
i
So by pure happenstance I also saw
an ad on SDGQ’s job board through their LinkedIn discussion group. And it’s interesting
—
and very pertinent to the discussion on
CE-L —
was that one of the requirements listed on the ad was:
Connaît et manie Le Ramat de la typographie d’Aurel Ramat et d’Anne-Marie Benoît et The Elements of Typographic Style de Robert Bringhurst
In essence, whoever posted that ad is treating the
Ramat as the French equivalent of Bringhurst.
It just so happens that the Toronto Reference Library has not one, but
two copies of the
Ramat.
So a couple of hours ago I went downtown to the library and looked for the book. Because there are no catalogues on the fourth floor, I asked the librarian and he looked it up. I went with him to the general French section and we couldn’t find it.
So he turned back and I followed, and when he stopped at the shelves labelled “French as a Second Language” I was already feeling a little amused. He looked around, and before long, I spotted the book before he did.
I mean
—
if you don’t get why I was amused
—
isn’t this incredible? This is an
incredibly technical book and it’s shelved on the
FSL shelves.
FSL people definitely do not want it if even all graphic designers are not expected to know what’s in there. Why, then, has it been shelved on the
FSL shelves? It looks like the librarian who filed the book did not even bother to read it to figure out what it’s about.
So what does the
Ramat say about hard spaces within parentheses? “None” (
rien): It doesn’t even say “thin spaces for quality typography, none otherwise” (
fine (rien)). There should not be hard spaces within parentheses, just as I thought.
And the
APA question? I did find something yesterday:
An unofficial and partial French adaptation of the APA that says plainly that there is no such thing as an official French version, and
something even less official-looking but much more useful because it actually covers subtitles.
