Dirtytalk's \say for quoting doesn't work in captions

Question

The quotation command \say from the dirtytalk package doesn't seem to work in figure captions. Does anyone know why this is the case and how to fix it?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{dirtytalk}
\begin{document}
Say is working \say{fine} here.


\begin{figure}
    \caption{But it \say{doesn't} work here.}
\end{figure}
\end{document}

Manually inserting the correct quotation marks “ and ” works fine though. But shouldn't \say produce the same result?

There are questions about caption not accepting fragile stuff https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/110831/250119 but none about \say being verbatim-like in particular. Duplicate? — user202729, Dec 29 '21 at 15:45
Actually cprotect isn't necessary, just normal protect works. Fragile command. — user202729, Dec 29 '21 at 15:45
"fragile command in moving argument" eg https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/4736/what-is-the-difference-between-fragile-and-robust-commands-when-and-why-do-we-n — David Carlisle, Dec 29 '21 at 15:55

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered May 07 '22 at 10:05

1

Another why to get around this is to use the csquotes package instead of dirtytalk and replace all \say commands by \enquote as suggested here.

The \enquote command works in captions by default.

csquotes has more functionality and is also included in the MikTex unlike dirtytalk. I stopped using dirtytalk because of this.

answered May 07 '22 at 10:05

vincirist

11
4

Any idea why miktex does not include dirtytalk? (I agree on csquotes btw) – daleif May 07 '22 at 13:36
@daleif No clue. I asked the question on the Miktex-Repo. Maybe we'll get some answers :). – vincirist May 08 '22 at 15:12

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 29 '21 at 16:25

The package does

\providecommand{\say}[1]{...}

and the used code cannot survive in moving arguments.

I'm not sure what's the purpose of \providecommand, but anyway you need to make the command robust.

Either use \protect\say{text} in captions or section titles, or add

\MakeRobust{\say}

in the preamble (after loading dirtytalk, of course).

Dirtytalk's \say for quoting doesn't work in captions

2 Answers2