In French we have a similar problem. Currently the most popular form is "citoyen.ne.s" or "citoyen.nes" (besides the good old "citoyens" or "citoyennes et citoyens"), which sometimes gets rendered as a website by some text displayers (e.g. les habitant.es). It's technically supposed to be a middle dot (citoyen·ne·s) but nobody has that on their keyboard (I literally had to copy-paste it from wikipedia) so people use the point instead. We used to use parentheses like "citoyen(ne)s" but these have vastly be replaced by the dots.

[–] Hyperi0n@lemmy.film 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

FYI, hold Alt and the press 0 1 8 3 then release Alt.

[–] Interesting_Test_814@jlai.lu 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Doesn't work on a phone/tablet

[–] Darxium@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

If it's an Android and using Gboard you can go to the symbol tab and hold - to choose the · symbol.

[–] sonnenzeit@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting. In German typography we used to use lower quotation marks at the beginning of a quote and lower quotation marks at the end of a quote, both in handwriting and print:

„Amazing“

But the lower version isn't found on the default QWERTZ keyboard layout so in personal digital communication (instant messages, emails, etc) especially you find double upper ones a lot:

"Amazing" or 'Amazing'

The formal spelling rules haven't been updated and you may still find the lower-upper vision in professional publications where the software adjusts the quotation marks according to a global setting. But most anything that is typed directly by a user will use the lazy lower-lower version.

[–] Interesting_Test_814@jlai.lu 1 points 1 year ago

We actually have the same issue with our « quotes » and accentuated capital letters in French, so « l'État » sometimes becomes "l'Etat".