Help with French release

I’ve uploaded cover art & done my best with the track list for https://musicbrainz.org/release/fd1dadf6-881d-45c6-bb4c-c9321df96563 but… I know absolutely no French. I can’t help but think I’ve made a mess of it, especially the punctuation. Spaces before colons look really weird to me, and the release writes things like “N°1” to abbreviate “number 1” (well, or whatever that is in French). I figured that was an attempt at the № sign (and used that), not N-degrees. But I have no idea what the spacing should be (or if we just use “no.”)

The relevant edit is https://musicbrainz.org/edit/49317860

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In french, what should be used for no. is : nᵒ (letter o in superscript)

nᵒ is an abbreviation for numéro (which means number)
nᵒˢ is an abbreviation for numéros (which means numbers, it’s plural)

n with a zero or a degree symbol (in superscript) should be avoided (as well as #, no or no.)

№ is a unicode character used in cyrillic script (nothing to do with french which uses latin script). It means number as well.

Since superscript o and s can be hard to type with a keyboard. These other forms are acceptable, I guess, but nᵒ is prefered.

In french colons are preceded by a non-breaking space (U+00A0). It looks weird to you but not to me :slight_smile:

In your example, I’d write track 2 like this :

L’Arlésienne : Suite pour orchestre nᵒ 1 : 2. Menuet. Allegro giocoso

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It’s not in cyrillic, it’s in Basic Multilingual Plane Letterlike Symbols and is very OK for French IMO. :slight_smile:
Better than N degrees.
I have noted some typos in the edit note, though.

Maybe we should work on a french classical style guide :wink:

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Even better than that is the narrow no-break space, as seen in most literature and press. :slight_smile:

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Ok. I’m pretty sure if I try to put in a second edit now to fix it’ll fail and canceling the existing edit would mean having to re-type all that (and no doubt make different typos)… so I plan to let it apply, then put in another edit to correct.

@Lotheric I notice you’ve added a space between nᵒ and 1. The release doesn’t show that, but I take it that’s something weird the release did? Should I use U+202F narrow no-break space there as @jesus2099 suggests? (Seems like that’d be a terrible place to take a line break).

@jesus2099 Sorry about the apostrophes. I just missed those. Will fix the typo as well.

So, for example:

L’Arlésienne : Suite pour orchestre nᵒ 1 : 1. Prélude. Allegro deciso (Tempo di marcia) — Andantino — Andante molto

is that correct? [Well, no it’s not because upon submit the forum changed my narrow no-break spaces into ordinary spaces. Worked around it by using   in place.]

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Indeed you should :wink:

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It is yet another ASCII vs. typographically-correct punctuation issue, see Use of special characters.

This one is just specific to the French language, not to classical music.

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If it’s request time: I’d really like a self-contained French language classical style guideline.
Ones that are brief and link out, well … the temptation to wing it expands exponentially. I think I’ve resisted so far. Though I do wonder if what I actually forget to do on some foreign releases is rather the result of unconscious responses to apparently Byzantine CSGs.

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How does that work reo ? Make a draft, post it here, vote on it somehow ?

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Derobert, I’ve frenchified your edits. Check it out.

Make a draft, post it here, ask for comments, and make a style ticket for it while you’re at it. If people think it’s good, I’ll add it.

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@nedotepa @spitzwegerich Your edits https://musicbrainz.org/edit/49322722 and https://musicbrainz.org/edit/49331075 were both made based on the original track list (from before my edit) that doesn’t actually match the one printed on the release & omits a lot of information. Unfortunately, AFAIK, it’s not possible to edit based on a pending edit.

I think that means (if my edits apply) yours will both fail. Or if not, they’ll apply and wipe out mine. Not exactly sure how that’ll work, but I’m pretty sure the outcome won’t be as desired.

(I voted against both, but if I’m wrong about how it’ll work out, I’m happy to retract the vote).

@Lotheric A CSG French style guideline would be nice, especially if it’s useful to people who don’t know French. The current general French guidelines aren’t really that useful to non-French speakers (despite having an English translation) — e.g., how would I know if it includes a subject and predicate, or if its a verb phrase?

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Done!

I’ll make a style ticket once we have some progress in the thread.

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OK, I believe I’ve fixed everything in https://musicbrainz.org/edit/49476011

I thought we should use either № or No, but not N degree.

Degree is U+00B0 and he used U+1D52 which is MODIFIER LETTER SMALL O

Ah, I could not see that with mobile. :tipping_hand_woman: