On 11/28/07, Jared Williams <jared.williams1(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: That's a relief. Now that I understand this rule, I think it's a complete load of bollocks, and should be removed from any notion of "correct" treatement of wikitext. Mismatched apostrophe groupings should be considered erroneous input whose rendering is undefined. Why? For starters, as discussed, the French wikipedia doesn't even use this construct. Worse, it only works *once* per paragraph. Look at how this renders: * L'''amour'' is great the first time. But l'''amour'' fails the second time. You guessed it, bold from the first ''' to the second ''', and italics from the first '' to the second ''. And why would it be any different? The treatment of 4 apostrophes is much less offensive. This renders correctly: * L''''amour''' is bold the first time. And l''''amour''' is still bold the second time. The 4 apostrophes -> apostrophe, bold rule is at least consistent, though it's still not intuitive that this: ''''blah'''' put the first apostrophe in normal text, while the second one is bold. Hard to believe the user really wants that... Of course, the only time 4 apostrophes ever renders as anything *other* than apostrophe followed by bold is when the crazy rule above is invoked, turning it into two apostrophes followed by italics. Steve (rambly late at night)

Yeah. It does seem a lot more trouble that its worth. For instance introducing an escape character, (say \ for example) that guarentees the following character is text. * L\'''amour'' is great the first time. But l\'''amour'' fails the second time. Jared

Was just off the top of the head idea, but still think its easier than explaining why * L'''amour'' is great the first time. But l'''amour'' fails the second time. Won't work as expected. Jared