> The question of what to use as first and second order quotation marks > seems to be language related: > In US English (and Swedish), quotes are nested as > ``And then he said `foo bar', ... '' > whereas in UK English, it is > `And then he said ``how bad'', ... ' > I think. I'm not aware of any fixed rule about this: if there is one, it's certainly not enforced. > * In US English, the number 1e9 is typeset as "one billion", whereas in UK > English, it is typeset as "one milliard". (After the French revolution, the > metric system, and the system with "milliard" was invented, and the > British, as the Swedes, started using that; later the French switched back > to the original system, the used in the US.) I boggle. I've never heard *anyone* use milliard in 50 years of listening to spoken English (as opposed to USAn, that is ;-). I've seldom heard it in spoken French, for that matter, but I did at least know of its existence as a French word... > In principle, one could think of special commands for cardinal numbers; > one might the use the source code, to see which number was intended. :-) Eh? Robin Fairbairns