French punctuation

I noticed in Assimil that the sentences were punctuated differently and didn't think too much of it.. but as I began to correct other people's work on LiveMocha it became apparent to me that punctuation was rather important. Many people would not capitalise the start of their sentences, or use proper spacing between sentences and I felt that if they were going to be so lazy, sometimes I really couldn't even be bothered to correct their work. It's as if they made no real attempt whatsoever..

Anyhoo... according to the wonderful french.about.com site, French does have slightly different punctuation to English.

I already knew about the decimal point thing, where a full stop/period would not be used and a comma would be used instead. eg - 1.5kg of tomatoes = 1,5 kg de tomates.

The main differences that became obvious to me was that there is a space before a colon (:), a semi-colon (;), an exclamation mark (!) and a question mark (?). Also that the quotation marks (" ") are not used, but the 'guillemets' instead. ( « » )

More explained here and how to type them in HTML.

Transparent French proficiency test

Transparent languages proficiency test (new link?)

My score:
Your score = 65%
You are at the Beginner level.
You scored 98 points out of 150.

Part I: French Grammar
You scored 26 points out of 45.
You scored 58% on this section.

Part II: French Grammar
You scored 29 points out of 45.
You scored 64% on this section.

Part III: French Vocabulary
You scored 23 points out of 30.
You scored 77% on this section.

Part IV: French Reading Comprehension
You scored 20 points out of 30.
You scored 67% on this section.

Google translations

I found out some time ago by accident that you can use Google like a calculator.. just type in your calculation eg (150*4320)-(34/12) and it comes up with the answer. I also used it to change fahrenheit temperatures into celcius. eg 100 degrees F = but what I just found out (by accident again) is that it now does quick translations too. Simply type in 'translate' and the word, or 'translate french' and then the word.

Voilà! :)