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# Punctuation

Punctuation is used to indicate various things in program menus eg.:

- Elipses (...) --- a dialogue box will appear for further input eg “Save As...”
- Colon (:) --- usually in a list of entry fields eg “Name: "

And sometimes it is simply there for style.

## Simple Policy

Want a simple answer to punctuation?

Follow the English punctuation exactly

## Specific Punctuation Issues

### Elipses (...)

Elipses are usually used to indicate that a dialogue box will appear and the user will be required to give further input. Compare the menu entries Save with Save As.... You’ll notice that ‘Save’ has no elipse, the computer will immediately save the current file and needs no further input from the user. While ‘Save As...’ has an elipse indicating that the user will be presented with a dialogue box, this time the Save dialgue box so that they can supply a new filename.

Make sure that you include all elipses in your translation. You might find that a programmer has used 2 or 4 dots instead of 3: use 3 dots in your translation and report the error.

.. → ...
.... → ...

The elipse always occurs at the end of the sentence to indicate continuation. Even if you need to change the word order for your language make sure that the elipses occurs at the end of the sentence.

Blah blee... → Flee... flah is WRONG
Blah blee... → Flee flah... is CORRECT

### Fullstops (.)

We all learnt that sentences should always end in a fullstop. However, when translating add a fullstop only if one appears in the English. If you do not see a fullstop then do not add one. The reason for this is simply style, there is a most probably a reason why the fullstops have been left out, it looks better. If during testing you notice that it doesn’t work or that there should be a fullstop then correct appropraitely and report the bug. But in the first translations simply follow the English.

### Colons (:)

Colons are usually followed by a space and are used to indicate that this is a label for the adjacent text input box. Please make sure that you include the colon and the space is required.

## French Style

It seems to be tradition that the Frenach place a space before ? and ! at the end of a sentence eg.:

    You will delete all your files !
    Are you sure ?

You do not need to follow this style, please change it to the accepted punctuation style in your language.

One exception is when the last word is a variable:

    Are you sure you want to access %S ?

Which might display as:

    Are you sure you want to access http://example.com ?

In this case it is good that the question mark is seperate as it ensures that you do not think that the question mark is part of the URL or file name filled into the variable during runtime.

## Checking

You can check your start and end punctuation using pofilter

    pofilter -t startpunc -t endpunc <input> <output>

Other usefull tests are:

    brackets
    startwhitespace
    endwhitespace