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rendering.html (section 14.3.6 Quotes) currently has :lang(en) { quotes: '\201c' '\201d' '\2018' '\2019'; } /* “ ” ‘ ’ */ :lang(fr) { quotes: '\00ab' '\00bb' '\201c' '\201d'; } /* « » “ ” */ While it's true that French uses guillemets « » for quoting, it uses them in spaced form: Quelqu’un fait : « Chut ! » I'd have thought that this should mean that the value of 'quotes' for fr should include that spacing (say as nbsp, for the sake of UAs that don't implement tr14 line breaking), as in '\ab\a0' '\a0\bb' '\201c' '\201d' . The [CLDR] reference given isn't very specific, so I haven't found the exact source of the current rules. The prose of Unicode 6.0.0 (chapter 6, p190) only says “of these languages, at least French inserts space...” (and goes on to suggest no-break space).
As a French speaker I can confirm that the “correct” quotes are « » with no-break spaces inside, though many people don’t bother and use "" since it is the one on the keyboard. This is documented here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English_usage_of_quotation_marks#French
We're generating these rules straight from the CLDR database: http://cldr.unicode.org/ http://www.unicode.org/repos/cldr/trunk/common/main/ Currently it says: <delimiters> <quotationStart>«</quotationStart> <quotationEnd>»</quotationEnd> <alternateQuotationStart>‹</alternateQuotationStart> <alternateQuotationEnd>›</alternateQuotationEnd> </delimiters> I recommend asking Unicode to add the space characters.
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: Rejected Change Description: no spec change Rationale: See comment 2. Note that as soon as Unicode is updated, the HTML spec will automatically get fixed as well as soon as I next edit the spec. The CLDR data is automatically imported with each update to the HTML spec.