How to best format mixed language posts?

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It would be great to have a particular highlight mode (in addition to bold and italic) for languages other than the main language of the post. Currently, it appears that italics are the way to go on this site, but I find that limits legibility. That's mostly because italics are an emphatic mode used in normal text, but also because the font used in StackExchange differentiates little between the two.

At the very least, there should be guidelines about how to write what language, how. Or maybe I missed the guidelines and they already exist? Ĉu iu ajn opinias ion?

asked 2016-08-26T01:41:33.440

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Answers

2

In linguistic literature the convention is to underline (in the age of typewriters) or nowadays italicise object language, ie any examples you're talking about.

I do agree that it is not very distinct in the font used here. For emphasis it would be better to avoid italics and use bold instead.

asked 2016-08-26T01:41:33.440

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2If we're going to have guidelines about this, I think they should be in line with the conventions from linguistic literature, rather than going against them.–None–2016-08-26T15:17:53.540

@MarcosCramer Yes, that is my view (which on reflection is not very clear from my answer).–None–2016-08-26T15:24:12.137

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One possibility, which works well if the change in language is to provide an example or show off a sentence, is to place the sentence in a quote block by placing a "> " before it. For example:

Mi estas Esperantisto

asked 2016-08-26T01:41:33.440

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2This only works if you want to talk about a whole phrase. If you just want to talk about a single word, like vorto, you really need something inline.–None–2016-08-26T18:36:10.690

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I would rather use the conventions used for the single languages to quote a phrase. I would also avoid writing a sentence on three lines just to use > to highlight a phrase.

asked 2016-08-26T01:41:33.440

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