Antique typography again: marginal quotation marks
Robert J. O'Hara
old documents via CSS, this time an old style of block quotation.
Nowadays we commonly identify a block quotation by setting it in from
the margin, or by changing font size, but we don't commonly put
quotation marks around it. (At least that is US practice.)
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Old typographic practice (1700s, say) often put a quotation mark at the
beginning of each line:
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"qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq
"qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq
"qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq
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(I have read that the gradual omission of those quotation marks, while
leaving the space behind, was the origin of the modern practice of block indentation.)
Assuming the quoted passage is marked up as <blockquote>, can anyone
think of a way to replicate the marginal quotation mark via CSS? You
could of course force an HTML line break to match the original text
letter for letter and then just type the quotation mark at the beginning
of each line, but that's not in the CSS spirit certainly. The ideal is
to have the thing resizable and have the quotation marks appear at the
beginning of each line no matter how the text flows. There is a
first-line pseudo-element, and one could do :before on the first line,
but there is no "line" pseudo element in general. In the absence of a
"line" pseudo-element (which would be a fantastic thing, if anyone from
W3C is listening), I think I've hit a CSS limit, but perhaps someone
here can see how to do it.
Bob O'Hara (http://rjohara.net)