"Anne" == Gutenberg9443 <Gutenberg9443@aol.com> writes:
Anne> In a message dated 12/20/2005 7:12:21 P.M. Mountain Standard Anne> Time, wally.thompson@gmail.com writes: Wally> I'm working on a book that has poetry within the Wally> text. Sometimes a poem ends the paragraph and sometimes it Wally> does not. So I'm wondering how to handle this in the text Wally> file without leaving it ambiguous. Anne> Wally, could you provide a brief example? I don't do much Anne> with proofreading on PG, but I am a book publisher. If I saw Anne> an example in which the poem ends the paragraph and the poem Anne> does not end the paragraph, it would help. Are you saying Anne> that in some cases the poem is within the paragraph and the Anne> paragraph continues after the poem, or that the paragraph Anne> ends but the poem carries over to the next paragraph? I've Anne> seen both, and of course they're handled differently. Anne> Anne Practically: in a printed book, you recognize that a new paragraph starts after the poem from the indent. PG books do not indent paragraphs, but mark with a blank line. So there is a blank line always, since after a poem one leaves a blank line anyway. The problem is that if you want to reformat a book with indented paragraphs, the information is gone, and you cannot decide if there is a new paragraph or not (unless e.g. the new text starts with lowercase, since a new paragraph starts a new sentence. But of course there is the possibility that there is a new sentence but not a new paragraph...) This shows once more that presentational markup with blank lines only is insufficient to capture all the informations. The problem is not only for poetry, it is also valid for quotes; with the added complication that a quote can be subdivided in paragraphs, (or a poem subdivided in stanzas) and nevertheless the quotation ban be contained in the body of a paragraph: He said (first paragraph of a quotation) (second paragraph of the quotation) and even added (more quotation) After a long pause he added (final quotation) This is probably two paragraphs, but maybe only one. Carlo