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st: RE: apostrophes, quotation marks, left or right quotes?
As I evidently said in 2005, it is unfortunate that people continue to be bitten by this.
I am unclear why you think that email was mystifying.
Your detailed account may help StataCorp revise the explanation in the manuals. You are right: only
when you find the correct answer do all the accounts make complete sense.
But unless you can show that what is quoted here from the manuals about "most keyboards" is incorrect,
your main complaint appears to be that the manuals do not explicitly mention the kind of keyboard
you use. Similarly, although Svend Juul gets full marks for pointing you in the right direction, the last part of his
explanation in turn will make little sense for a very large class of users. That's the nub. Only
an account that went through all possible keyboard variations would satisfy everyone, it seems. I also
have in mind many countries not strongly represented in this list, but with large groups of Stata users.
Left and single quotes are needed in the use of local macros. As local macros are not
I think usually met in many introductions to Stata, the authors of those introductions often
don't explain how to produce the single quotes. I know that helps not at all when you need to know precisely what
to type, but every writer on Stata struggles with what to include and what to omit.
The plea to show these characters "as they look on the screen" will help if and only if the
user is using a font on the screen that in this respect resembles that in the manuals. As the user
has a choice of screen font, that cannot be guaranteed. Similarly the request to have the characters shown
"as they look on the keyboard" cannot be satisfied, because, as most of your posting underlines, there is no
common look across all user keyboards.
As far as local macros are concerned, one key to understanding is that left and right quotes must be different, as otherwise
local macros cannot be nested. Thus 'a'b'c' would otherwise be ambiguous. However, I know that in turn doesn't help much,
as the Stata user meeting local macros the first time is unlikely to want to learn about nesting at the same time.
Nick
[email protected]
P.S. I don't know what you mean by "a.m. books". You see how difficult it is to be universally intelligible!
------------
Dirk Enzmann
How does one produce left and right single quotes as they are used in Stata?
Meanwhile, I know the answer. But because I am using Stata only
occasionally, every now and then I encounter typical beginners'
problems. Thus, it took me a while to find the correct answer and I
would like to comment on the difficulties hoping that this might improve
the situation of other beginners having the same problem.
Although I searched in "An introduction to Stata ..." by Svend Juul,
searched the release 9 "Getting started with Stata", [U] "User's Guide",
and [P] "Programming", and searched the internet (FAQ, statalist), it
took me more than half an hour to find the solution (ultimately by trial
and error).
I think the difficulty is due to a combination or an accumulation of
three things:
(1) I am using a non-English/American keyboard (German);
(2) The letter type used in printing (especially the Stata manuals!)
makes it impossible to decide how the correct quote should look like on
the screen;
(3) To find the answer you have to ask the correct question, but for
non-English speakers it is difficult to find the denotation of the signs
as used by the Stata community.
Let us start with the latter: In German we denote the signs "Hochkomma".
Looking this up in a standard dictionary renders "apostrophe". Searching
the indices of the manuals or the internet for "apostrophe" does not
help. Next, I tried "quotation mark". But alas, ... You have to look for
"left quote" or "right quote", but how should I know if I don't know the
answer already?
Browsing through the pages of the a.m. books did not help. Every time I
found examples using the quotes there were no indications on how to
produce the quotes using my keyboard. The problem: In printing the left
quote is a curved quote similar to a small round left bracket - similar
to "(" -, the right quote curved like a right bracket ")". However,
there are three different single quotes I can create with my keyboard:
One "forward" quote (similar to the forward slash "/"): |�|, one
"backward" quote (similar to the backslash "\"): |`|, and one vertical
quote (similar to the OR sign "|"): |'|. Why don't they use one of these
in the printed manuals? Why? Everything would be so much easier!
Finally, after I solved the problem, I found the following exchange in
the Stata list (thread "Help with Reading Arguments for Do-File"
http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2005-11/msg00499.html ): George
wrote "Thanks, the quotation marks were indeed the source of the
problem. Unfortunately, the manual does not make that clear." to which
Nick (n.j. cox) responded: "Many people have been bitten by this at
precisely your stage, but it is wrong to blame the manuals. I find at
[U] 18.3.1 (p.200 of Stata 9 edition) that the key difference between
left and right single quotes is explained when local macros are introduced."
To the contrary, it *is* the manuals to blame! If you read p. 200 of the
Stata 9 edition you find: "... we use a left single-quote (located at
the upper left on most keyboards), ... and a right single quote (located
under the " on the right side of most keyboards)...". This description
does not help at all if you are using a non-English/American keyboard!
And what is more: In printing they always use the small "(" ")" quotes
(forward-backward-curved), so that it is really *impossible* to
recognize the correct quote. Why make it so difficult? Why not print it
as it should look like? Why not *print* `shortcut' ?
On the German keyboard, I have to use the "accent grave" (thus, the
apostrophe starting on the top left) for the left single quote, and for
the right single quote I have to use the "common" single quote (the
vertical quote you find above the #-sign on a German keyboard ;-) , see:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/KB_Germany.svg/400px-KB_Germany.svg.png
Ultimately, the best description I found in Svend Juuls "An Introduction
to Stata ...":
"Hint: Producing the left single quote: In this book, the appearance of
single quotes differs a bit from how they look on your keyboard and
screen. Try 'help quotes' to see how they look on the screen. Keyboard
layouts differ, and on some keyboards, the left single quote is produced
by a dead key, meaning that nothing is produced until you hit the
spacebar." (p. 269)
If it is impossible to print the quotes in the manuals as they look on
the screen (and on the keyboard) - please, take over Svend Juuls
exemplary description.
I hope that this lengthy comment helps future beginners and demystifies
Nicks observation that "Many people have been bitten by this". Bites are
necessary for computations but aren't helpful at all for learning.
*
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