Given the conservatism of the French Academy[1], which since 1635 has taken care of and set the rules of the French language, it is not surprising that the framing of such a document has quite a few peculiarities. Here we dwell on most of them and suggest some tricks for faster and more accurate processing.

Intervals before most punctuation marks (? ! : ; )

Regulations Règles Typographiques en usage à l'Imprimerie Nationale to place demi-cadratin or "small space" (n-space) before t. garnet. double punctuation marks (! : ; ?). A curious mnemonic rule is that you should put the pen twice on the ink cartridge so that they are not written 🙂 Before the dot, comma, hyphen, spaces are not put.

These intervals have been a problem even for powerful word processor programs like Microsoft Word and OpenOffice Write, so it's not uncommon to get misspelled text, even from a fairly literate Frenchman.

Our solution again passes in a Find & Change GREP that automates adding missing spaces with an undivided space. It is important to use an undivided space, otherwise you may get unpleasant surprises when screechprenasyaneto in the form of single or receive punctuation marks in the upper or lower line in paragraphs.

GREP requests two:

Find: \S\K[:?!;»]
Change: ~s$0

This ruling finds each of the listed punctuation marks, and the number of its character (except for the usual spacing and replaces them with an undivided space, plus the same found character).
To rule out the above possible migration problems, run a second request:

Find: \s+(?=[:?!:»])
Change: ~s

So we will be able to replace all spaces before the punctuation marks are included, inseparable. Please note that in the request, we have also included French quotation marks (")in the recited text., guillemet.

French quotation marks (<>)

Although it is common to find French texts with "English" single or double quotation marks in web-based technical reasons, in a printed document this is unacceptable and the use of "French" quotation marks, often called double chevrons, is mandatory. The replacement is very simple, and with the "usual" Find & Change, but another requirement is the attendance interval after the boiled quotation mark and before the boiled mark. Since we have solved part of this problem in point 1, there are only two more steps left.

Find: «\K\S
Change: ~s $0
and
Find: « \s
Change: «~s

Let me remind you that InDesign allows you to save all our consumer queries (Save Query). In someone's follow-up trick, it will stop recording macros in InDesign.

3. Apostrophe (‘)

Always writes merge. Pitfalls here include using a different character instead of the original "straight" apostrophe or a mixture of" thick "and" makes " apostrophes, which is quite annoying.

Decision:

Find: ~]
Change: ~'

We do not think that we have been completely exhaustive, but we hope that what has been said so far can greatly facilitate your work if you need to start with French spelling and, in particular, with French punctuation.

[1] The French Academy consists of 40 members, who are chosen for life, and therefore have been called "immortals". Anecdotal is the tenacity with which they do not allow geometry to be so world-famous computer in French, and live like an ordinateur.