German-style quotation marks too close to italics letters and mathpazo font package

Question

When I type an text in italic with the Palladio font the German quotation marks are (far) too close to the letters. The problem does not occur with English quotation marks.

Is there any solution or work-around for that? I like the font but this would keep me from using it.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

\usepackage[sc]{mathpazo}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}

\begin{document}

\textit{"`clever"' (or \glqq clever\grqq) compared to ``clever''}

\end{document}

Welcome to TeX.sx! Usually, we don't put a greeting or a "thank you" in our posts. While this might seem strange at first, it is not a sign of lack of politeness, but rather part of our trying to keep everything very concise. Upvoting is the preferred way here to say "thank you" to users who helped you. — doncherry, Jun 25 '12 at 20:58
Keeping it concise is not a bad idea, of course. But I can't even vote the helpful answer up, lacking 15 "reputation". — NauC, Jun 25 '12 at 21:27
Yes, but it won't be long until you will be able to, since you asked a good question with a perfect MWE. And you can always accept answers to your own questions afaik. — doncherry, Jun 25 '12 at 23:31
related: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/531/what-is-the-best-way-to-use-quotation-mark-glyphs — matth, Jun 26 '12 at 08:41

egreg · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-25T22:38:17.160

11

You should really be using the T1 encoding for writing in German. Try

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[sc]{mathpazo}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}

%\DeclareTextCommand{\glqq}{T1}{%
%  \textormath{\quotedblbase\nobreak\hskip0.05em\relax }
%     {\mbox{\quotedblbase\kern0.05em }}}
%\DeclareTextCommand{\grqq}{T1}{%
%  \textormath{\kern0.02em \textquotedblleft}{\mbox{\kern0.02em \textquotedblleft}}}

\begin{document}

\textit{"`clever"' (or \glqq clever\grqq) compared to ``clever''}

\end{document}

Here's the result

enter image description here

I've added some (commented) lines that you can activate should you want to “improve” the spacing; the result after uncommenting those lines is shown below

Adjust the two kerns until the result is completely satisfying.

enter image description here

edited Jun 25 '12 at 22:38

answered Jun 25 '12 at 21:05

egreg

1,121,712

I'm normally using T1 encoding of course, but in this case I skipped the line as I thought that the example should be "as minimal as it gets". I would thank you, if I was allowed to do that or vote you up if i was able to - but alas, I don't have 15 reputation. – NauC Jun 25 '12 at 21:14
1

@NauC Without T1 the result is indeed very poor; OTOH, with T1 it doesn't seem bad. – egreg Jun 25 '12 at 21:17
With the first version of your code I thought that using T1 was just the preliminary step for the following (now commented) bits. I could swear that I tried it just with T1 before asking and the problem was still there, but obviously I didn't. That said, I think the version with just adding the package does the trick for me! – NauC Jun 25 '12 at 21:24
2

@NauC Remember to accept (clicking on the green check mark) the answer that better solves your problem. Please wait some time to see if some better answer comes along. This is how we reward people that help. Don't be afraid to ask again and, possibly, to answer. Welcome to TeX.SX. – egreg Jun 25 '12 at 21:28

Sveinung · Answer 2 · 2012-06-26T13:23:39.147

7

I also suggest you take a look at the microtype-package. It is possible to set extra kerning per character, see section 5.4 and chapter 6 for further details.

Using kern has effect on hyphenation, the next word has to be manually hyphenated.

edited Jun 26 '12 at 13:23

answered Jun 25 '12 at 22:25

Sveinung

20,355

score 7 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 26 '12 at 08:39

No question about quotation marks is complete without mentioning the csquotes package. It provides the command \enquote{} which will give you correct quotation marks in almost all cases.

\documentclass{article} 

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage[sc]{mathpazo}
\usepackage[babel=true]{microtype}
\usepackage[autostyle]{csquotes}

%% ==================
\begin{document}
manual quotes
\begin{itemize}
    \item "`clever"'
    \item \glqq clever\grqq 
    \item ``clever''
    \item \textit{"`clever"'}
    \item \textit{\glqq clever\grqq }
    \item \textit{``clever''}
\end{itemize}

csquotes quotes:
\begin{itemize}
    \item \enquote{clever} german quotation marks
    \item \textit{\enquote{clever} german quotation marks}
    \item \foreignquote{english}{clever} foreign quotation marks
    \item \textit{\foreignquote{english}{clever} foreign quotation marks}
\end{itemize}
\end{document}

And when you mention the csquotes-package, you have to mention the quoting-package, http://tug.ctan.org/pkg/quoting — Sveinung, Jun 26 '12 at 13:29

German-style quotation marks too close to italics letters and mathpazo font package

3 Answers3