This is why I drink.
Your drinking is why I care so much about typography. x
Very interesting. Especially regarding the ellipsis and decimalisation.
Why not use LaTeX?
Extra kudos if you can tell me what's wrong with MY sentence...
(sorry, not a true ellipsis there)
I think my brackets are out too. Oh, for f-
I loved that you started with the bit about typographic nazis; I was thus taken a little off-guard that the whole list is then so serious about the mistakes.
In any case, I did learn a few things I didn't know, which is always good. Thanks for that.
Interesting. Although I would counter that if the errors become common enough that usage would dictate use.
The interpunct for sterling is something that I remember from school maths classes in the 1980s, but had completely vanished from my consciousness until now. (I'd imagine that calculators had at least as great a role as electronic typesetting in establishing the full stop as the decimal point.)
But I'd suggest that the interpunct is obsolete in this particular setting: the GCWM resolved in 2003 that the comma and 'dot on the line' are the two correct choices for a decimal separator, depending upon the region.
you don't really actually believe that
people will use the character palette
just to satisfy your obsessiveness...
do you?
tell me you don't really believe that.
-bowerbird
I guess it's not really a guide for everyday banging-on-a-keyboard typing, it's for those occasions when you want things to be absolutely accurate. Like if you're a graphic design student, for example, and you want to be loved by your hirsute tutor.
Am I right?
OK, Nazi-boy, I'm going to call you on your parenthesis. These rounded shapes () are actually called "lunulae" or "little moons", where the square kind [] are called "crotchets", and they are both types of bracket.
Anything that takes text out of the normal flow of the sentence - a pair of en-dashes, like this - or a pair of commas, is termed "parenthesis". Brackets are a subset of parenthesis, and your two types of bracket have their own technical names as outlined above. So your distinction is incorrect.
Ha, long knives to me!
but, i mean, if you _do_ want to
get picky, then i _hate_ people
(like you?) who don't seem to know
when they need to use em-dashes,
which are _not_ "going out of fashion".
-bowerbird
All very true, Mr P, and good to see these issues so elegantly enumerated.
But what are we poor iphone users supposed to do?
>> [the hyphen can be used] mathematically to represent minus
No! There is a distinct minus character for that purpose. The hyphen should only be used as a hyphen! Since that's pretty much what you said for every item, I don't know how that one slipped through. The hyphen looks similar, but that's not good enough.
I really enjoyed everything else though! I had no idea about the currency.
Interesting, especially the alt-[ and alt-shift-[ for proper quotes. Never knew about that one, thanks!
Yay, the internet. As fine a cross-section as you could wish to meet.
I'd rather just sit at watch, but I think that would be churlish, so here are a few reactions from me.
@Phil LaTeX should be that weird jiggly all-caps logo.
@Chris Absolutely agree; that’s why I was careful to say they were wrong ‘currently’.
@pseudonymous in nc Cool! I hadn’t heard of that. The interpunct does look archaic and oddly British.
@bowerbird Bless your cotton socks, of course I don’t expect anyone to do anything to satisfy any part of me, least of all my obsessiveness.
@Lise Hmmm. I’m loving the detail and I need to do some more digging. My gut reaction is that we’re in danger of confusing ‘parenthetical remarks’ – the kind of snip from a main sentence – as a linguistic shorthand from the name for the characters themselves. And I didn’t even mention braces. Muchas gracias for the note, though. I’m intrigued and must find out more...
@Steve Weep. There are some characters available from the tap-and-hold whatsit, but yes, I confess to getting a bit shirty with Apple when I’m composing emails.
@Dash Nazi You are, of course, entirely correct, and I’m a fool of a Took for letting that through. I deserve to set type in Arial for all time. Thanks for the correction!
Actually, the character that option-K produces is the ring-above accent. The true Spanish masculine ordinal (which is underlined in the best fonts) is option-0 (next-door neigbor option-9 is the feminine).
Actually, adding a middle dot in Mac OS X is pretty simple. Just do Shift-Opt-9 and it makes one for your correct £17·99.
Well, I guess what I mean is that although your note on the usage of crotchets versus lunulae is correct, your distinction between "parentheses" and "brackets" is not strictly so.
If we're being 100% sticklerish about typographical marks, we should be using those terms anyway - otherwise, in normal everyday usage, I see no particular problem with saying "round brackets" and "square brackets" respectively. And, yeah, "braces" for braces.
"Parentheses" is, I maintain, a less accurate term and therefore not all that helpful in making the distinction. Although I salute you for calling attention to the differiung uses of round and square brackets.
I'm sure there was a radio show about this once...
...And on the Web, there's a problem with setting em dashes.
One of the online publications for which I've written omits all space around them, but I put full spaces around them, and here's why:
Elsewise, you run the risk of almost-orphans (or illegible full justification) because of the way browsers set inline line breaks.
In most browsers, there is only one character, namely ASCII 32, that is used as a break point. All of the other spaces in the Unicode tables are treated as actual glyphs for the purposes of setting linebreaks.
Those of you who grasp where I'm going will quickly understand why I make the choice I do, but then... you probably also concede that Web typesetting is often a nightmare.
And my own site? Lately I just can't be bothered. Which is a mistake, considering how much work I put into laying out a consistent grid.
Oh, and one other thing:
http://www.evolt.org/article/A_S...Chart/17/21234/
...Very useful for Web people: the HTML and Unicode entities for all of the characters discussed in this article are listed there.
Thanks for the list. I got here from I love typography. I’m pleased to say that I don’t necessarily make any of these ‘mistakes’ although I occasionally don’t bother with the interpunct character for prices (as indeed you yourself didn’t in your previous item, about the Canon printer… ahem).
I have to side with Lise though on the subject of the usage of the words ‘parenthesis’ and ‘bracket’. I hadn’t previously come across that usage of the words ‘lunula’ and ‘crotchet’, so was pleased to see those (which make total sense).
One thing that I would encourage you and every self-proclaimed typesetting Nazi to beware is the distinction between prescribed usage (which everyone must follow) and individual style (which is, well, individual). So, while everyone should strictly speaking be using the correct prime marks for feet and inches (and minutes and seconds) and they should be writing “iWork ’08” and not “iWork ‘08” (shudder), people should be allowed to follow their own style when it comes to dashes and use of brackets. As long as they do everything consistently, then that’s fine with me. Typographic conventions vary between publications, and especially between languages.
I personally follow the suggestions of the Oxford Guide to Style and use en-dashes unspaced for ranges (15th–18th January, 3 –5 people, pages 12–34). I use em-dashes unspaced either to split up a sentence or to denote a parenthesis (so an em-dash on either side of the parenthetical remark). Similarly, I rigidly follow the spellings of the OED, which are so-called standard British spellings apart from verbs in -ize, -ized, and nouns in -izer, -ization, etc.
You also perhaps don’t realize (see what I did there?!) that there are some contexts where square brackets (or crotchets) are used in a different manner than that which you describe. I’m a Classicist, and there are two distinct usages of the square bracket used in different types of editions of ancient texts. Where an edition aims to set out exactly what is contained in a particular manuscript, text in square brackets indicates where a parchment is corrupt/decayed—the text within the brackets is the most likely reading supplied by the editor (where possible—sometimes we have to accept that there are lacunae—holes—in manuscripts). In modern editions of ancient texts (where an editor produces a text based on multiple manuscripts), text in square brackets indicates a reading by the editor which isn’t directly available in any one manuscript, but which seems to make more sense (according to the editor) in the context than any one particular manuscript.
I’m always delighted to find fellow typographic-convention enthusiasts!
Fine work, although you've missed my biggest bugbear - the flagrant misuse of the ampersand.
Usually by lazy bloody designers who can't be arsed to fit "kicked black & blue" or some such into a headline and opt for the good old & to save space.
Not sure that's a typographical error, or whether I've just opened a whole new Lynne Truss-sized can of worms.
#11: "these ones" s/b "these"
So far as the nomenclature for (...) and [...] is concerned, the impression I get is that the British and American usage differs, or possibly that traditional and technical usage differs. The traditional British approach seems to be "round brackets", "square brackets", "curly braces", whereas the technical convention is "parentheses" for (...), "brackets" for [...], and "braces" for {...}. The former is less ambiguous, the latter more concise but occasionally too ambiguous.
As for whether "parenthesis" refers to the symbols or the text they surround, the same could be asked of "comma" and "period", both of which referred to phrases back when punctuation was in its early stages of invention, and now refer to the symbols used to delimit those phrases in modern usage.
Very nice work. I was expecting something generic like mixing too many fonts as bad mistakes, but I failed every single one of these.
The character palette is now a part of my menu bar, thank you for all the tips.
You know what I hate? I still get documents from people with double spacing after periods. It is supremely annoying. I wish they would stop.
I enjoyed this article a lot — very useful, and one doesn't need to be a Nazi to assure quality.
I lay some of the blame on the limitations of computer software that don't intelligently and seamlessly correct mistakes like these as they frequently are wont to do with spellchecking: on a Mac, it's very easy to use special characters, but comparatively more difficult on Windows unless you install special software. And across platforms however, special characters/formatting aren't the most discoverable, and mthe majority of folks are apt to go with what they see on the keyboard.
Most text editors don't line-break em dashes without surrounding spaces properly either, so I've resorted to this:
GET READY FOR THE — BREAK IN THOUGHTS!
I wasn't previously familiar with "£17·99"; wonder if that applies to other currencies like the US dollar and the Euro?
You’re quite incorrect about the decimal point. Perhaps in certain mid-20th-century British books typeset in hot metal with ranging figures, middot would act as a decimal, but it is a surrogate for the actual decimal point, which was and is identical (even in Unicode) to a period.
Every list of common mistakes always overcorrects.
Next we discuss the incorrect date format on your blog comments, “ 03.31.08 - 4:31 pm” (count the errors).
@Dave! Oh yes, I hate those double spaces after periods too! Absolutely hate ’em.
But that’s enough from me, because clearly I need to run away and examine my life priorities…
It's a welcome article for those of us who didn't know em-dashes from en-dashes, but I suspect that a few people will continue to make mistakes on the internet.
Finally, someone as much of a Type-A(nal) as I am!
Kudos for educating the ones who are still kicking and screaming.
Now if I could just get my editor to allow italicized or bold punctuation in my book designs.
The only one I didn’t know was the middle dot…I knew where it was, just not it’s usage.
BTW: You should tell them about using the virgule [ ⁄ ] for making fractions. Opt-Shift-1.
Also setting ®, ™, ©, et. al. in sans-serif fonts, even when using serif. No serif type should be used at teeny-tiny sizes.
And a faux pas for you, Type Nazi: Too lazy to use curlys in your comment section?
Hey there. I, too, came here via ILT.
Regarding straight quotes and primes, Design Observer has a new article on that very topic: The Cuckoo Bird and the Keyboard, by Matthew Peterson.
Seems to me that its hard to get the " proper quotes in html... it creates issues in the database as well... so your fix doesn't work...
Parentheses, as Lise wrote, are the subordinated clauses contained by their punctuation: commas, dashes, or 'parens' as typesetters call them. Or 'round brackets' as they're increasingly called by shape-oriented people who also speak of 'square brackets' and 'curly braces'. It's wasteful and pretentious to use two words for each of these when one suffices. Why not simply 'parens', 'brackets' and 'braces'? Before you know it, people will be talking about things like 'round degree sign', 'diagonal solidus' and 'six-style quote mark'.
Calling parentheses 'parenthetical remarks' is similarly both pompous and pretentious. Not all parentheses are remarks, and why inflate the prose with two words when 'parenthesis' will do?
I have to agree with those who say that the web makes it hard to get these things right. So many browsers just don't support them well.
I'm surprised that you didn't have the Mac version of the fix for "What's wrong?" Especially since most designers are on Macs. Also, what would really top this post off, is if you included the difference between en and em dashes.
Didn't know the bit about interpuncts. But, here in the U.S., we rarely typeset prices in British pounds.
In fact, we rarely mention British pounds except in terms of how low the U.S. dollar has sunk against the pound… and every other world currency.
oops sorry my bad - i saw the em dash post. still, no mac solution? c'mon! ; )
dave! said:
> You know what I hate?
> I still get documents from people
> with double spacing after periods.
> It is supremely annoying.
> I wish they would stop.
first, dave!, the exclamation point
thing was outdated after wham!...
i use double-spaces after a period
because the gap between sentences
should be bigger than between words.
i think that, early on, the thinking
was that the computer would do this
_automatically_. but it doesn't...
so now we have a bunch of people who
are using just a single space, and
boy, do i hate _that_...
-bowerbird
I think you're being absolutely ridiculous. I vastly prefer straight quotes (for everything. Everything) and think your neurosis in regards to the mid-dot is silly. Language evolves, hence typography evolves, to make things easier. Perhaps your *fentiments* are that we should return to the long S as well?
WOW. You have to much time!.
Haha, you did not use a correct ellipsis in your brackets comment 
Please refrain from reading my blogs, I think you would have a grammer related nervous breakdown, haha!
I disagree with the iWork ’08. It should be iWork ‘08
When the first character(s) of a word is dropped, use an open apostrophe (e.g. ‘08 or ‘til for until), when characters after the first are dropped, use the close apostrophe (e.g. o’clock or rollin’).
Best example I have is Rock ‘n’ Roll. The abbreviated "and" uses open-a-close to represent the missing characters. Close-a-close isn't right.
Any other thoughts on this?
”Any other thoughts on this”
Yeah, my thought is that you are completely wrong.
Apostrophes and quotation marks are two different things. Apostrophes are always shaped like closing quotation marks, never opening quotation marks.
Correct:
Rock ’n’ Roll
"3½″ and 5¼″"
No, no, no, no, no. "½" and "¼" are backwards compatibility characters included in Unicode for historical reasons. Do not use them, ever. Find a way to typeset math properly and consistently.
Using precomposed fractions is a terrible solution, because there are only a few of them. Having to typeset any fraction outside the set will create inconsistencies. (The same applies to Unicode's superscript and subscript characters.)
Despite the constant claims of designers, there are plenty of ways to do proper typesetting in HTML, ways that every browser can support. Look up "asciimathml" and read up on character encodings. The solutions are all there.
Very interesting! You hit the nail on the head with my main pet peeve, which are the hyphens vs. the dash.
Most of these problems can be fixed in LaTeX, my weapon of choice.
Well, being a typesetter I was impressed by this article. It's amazing how much useless information I've managed to pick up in 8 months. At least there's other people in the same gang!
Also, I can no longer enjoy any printed matter due to the most obscene typographical errors known to man, that constantly invade my eyeballs on a daily basis. I am currently seeking professional help to combat the fizzing smoke that erupts from my ears whenever I read.
However, secretly I love it, especially the cheeky wee en dash.
The Devil is in the detail. 
This post is great! I didn't know I made those mistakes until I read your writing. Thanks!
But about the decimal number 17.99, I personally don't think that is a typographic mistake course every teacher, instructor, tutor and student writes the decimal numbers with the period in between. Can you suggest any articles or materials that discuss about this issue?
Well, as you raised the point of decimalisation, I thought I'd point out that this article isn't entirely true.
Using the decimal point on the line is actually correct, as, like everything else in the world, rules and styles of typography change. Believe it or not, it's seen to be old-fashioned when the decimal point is used in the medial position! This was originally a UK style, which is rarely used here now.
For more info, check out New Hart's Rules, published by Oxford University Press.
"Fool of a Took"... haha I use that one all the time.
What's really annoying is that even when you try to have your em and en-dashes all squared and settled. Lack of Unicode support/browser issues & incompatibilities mess everything up and you get a lot of squares å¨%20&'s and whatnot. That's why I stopped trying so hard.
But for those that still do (or have to care), utilities such as TextExpander and its ilk are a lifesaver (The whole concept of palettes annoy me too much to have one open all of the time).
Good stuff. Someone needs to keep the rules straight. However, you misused endashes. Endashes are *not* substitutes for emdashes.
For example:
"Brackets [like these ones] are used to add in information missing from a sentence you shouldn't change – such as a direct quote – or to add information outside the voice of the original text."
Those endashes (reproduced in this plaintext field as hyphens) should be emdashes.
Em dash out of favor? When and where have you come across that?
I've always used en for ranges (as you said, 1–2), never instead of an em, and em for pauses—you know—in a sentence.
No?
Yes.
I love type and have practiced all of this advice and a bit more (em spaces, etc. not covered here).
What is a mystery to me is why does not Adobe build a kind of Typesetter Checker into InDesign? That is, besides the auto quotes and auto ellipsis, etc.
After I import text, I spell check it. Then I should be able to Typeset Check it!
It could also be a plug in made by a smart programmer reading this. Get crackin’. (Uh, is that apostrophe right?)
(Having read just some of the comments, forgive me if I'm not the first to say this.)
iWork 08 (v 3.0.2) is actually smart enough to correct the very issue you identify. If I start typing Obama '08 the single-quote is initially 6-ish, anticipating a closing one later, but if I conclude the sentence with an exclamation mark, say, it flips to being 9-ish.
I've certainly seen the first-half of this behavior in Word and elsewhere, but never noticed a program good enough to correct it. (Of course, this is just one case. It may fail to be similarly nice in other situations.)
As a veteran designer, insufferably obsessed with details, it was a pleasure to read this post and its many and varied comments. Never apologize for making the effort to do something correctly, even though the definition of “correct” may change from time to time.
I note also that you are a fan of Bill Bryson. I have posted a older column of his (Design Flaws) on my blog which bears some relevance to this discussion.
Very useful – page bookmaked!
As for the fractions – what should one do when using less common fractions? Is it okay to use the ½ format side-by-side with the slash format? I don't know why I'd ever need to do that, I'm just curious.
Thank you for being one of the precious few who point out the prime symbols for inches are not the straight up and down keyboard sort. This one is dangerously close to being de facto correct as it is incorrect so universally. Sad.
Between un-savvy proofing and clients, it’s hard to get these making it correctly to print. OCD typesetters unite!!
Also, people out there, can we please use real fractions!!
I’m with ya brother!
"Is it okay to use the ½ format side-by-side with the slash format? I don't know why I'd ever need to do that, I'm just curious."
No, don't ever use the ½ characters. They're not typographically or technologically correct. See my post above.
Real fractions require proper mathematical typesetting support, which you CAN do in Word/iWorks/InDesign/whatever, and even on the internet. They just take a little bit of work.
If you look at real fractions in a real book, they do not look like 1/2, nor do they look like ½. They look like real fractions. Look at ½, the way it's the size of a capital letter. You would never see such tiny digits in professional typesetting. That character doesn't exist outside of computers.
If you have to pick one style, use the slash ones (1/2) consistently, because it's better to be consistently wrong than to be wrong in two different ways.
Nicely done. One day Internet transliteration issues won't confound our attempts to be correct in these cases.
I would add that the examples of correct and incorrect usage in the entry on ellipses aren't well differentiated (at least in the font I've configured in my browser). You might state outright that there should be spaces between the periods, but not between the first period and the word it follows. I find it useful to make those spaces non-breaking to ensure that the software doesn't break the ellipsis when wrapping the text. You may also wish to cover the guidelines between using four periods in ellipses instead of three, or at least mention that such guidelines exist.
I'm curious about your source for the claim that an en dash could ever function as a proper substitute for an em dash. I've got a mountainous cache of books on typography, punctuation, and usage, and none support such a claim.
You get some things wrong in these ones:
I am 5′ 10″ tall
14o and overcast
Typography should indeed change. You know the only reason you should put a period inside quotes? Because it would break off and not show in old printing presses.
If you are using Linux or Unix you can easily access most of these special characters with the “Compose key,” which is usually Alt if there is no dedicated key. In Windows, you can simulate a compose key with AllChars (allchars.zwolnet.com). So for example
Compose n - => –
Compose m - => —
Compose 1 2 => ½
Compose d g => °
Compose . . => ·
And regarding the unusual fraction issue, you can get those too if your typeface supports them:
Compose 2 5 => ⅖
You can also build up crazy fractions yourself:
Compose . 3 Compose . 1 Compose . / Compose _ 3 Compose _ 2 => ³¹⁄₃₂
These are pretty handy shortcuts for getting nice type in an environment not usually designed for typography, like Notepad or a Firefox text box.
As an architect, some thoughts, sloppily punctuated:
The issue with dimension syntax is being fought and re-fought constantly in our office. On CAD drawings, we use the convention of
5'-4 1/2"
for a measurement of 5 feet, four and a half inches. We insert a dash between feet and inches and use a space before the fraction. I don't know that there's a logic to that, but that's typically how it would have been written in the days before CAD systems, so we adapted it.
Fractions in general are NEVER converted to stacks or diagonally-separated numbers, for the simple fact that they don't read very well on reduced drawings (which we use constantly) or more critically when in the same pen weight as the rest of the text on a drawing.
Just my two cents. Great article!
I just wasted 45 seconds of my life.
honestly, it was a good effort to point out misuse of certain punctuation. but to go so far as to say that this is useful information for anyone other than an OCD grammar nazi who has nothing better in life than to blog--that's just out of line.
i speak for myself when i say this. ''Nobody cares.''
Interesting read.
But, nobody cares...
(Yes, those are just three periods.)
Is it actually possible to be any more anal?
Interesting for prints. Also a good advice for programmers, who should make those corrections automatic, as it's impractical to spend 4-5 strokes per char.
By the way, the fixes won't work in my Pt-br keyboard...
My bugbear is when people type the letter "O" instead of the numeral "0," or vice-versa.
Also, I've never heard of the en dash being used in place of an em dash.
Bah, that's just nitpicking I say. There are far worse errors out there to be so ridiculously specific. It's interesting though.
Em-dashes aren't going out of style; en-dashes in no way replace them.
Also, in your section on ellipses, you committed an error: ellipses have a space in front of them, as well as after them, in most instances — certainly in your first use.
If you really need to use those ones that need a character pallet it's worth it to discover the alt codes . For example: alt+171 [on the number pad] renders ½ and alt+172 renders ¼. note that on a laptop you'll need to hold the function[fn] key in order to use your number pad and also these codes do not work in browsers very often due to browser shortcuts[alt+home opens your home page]
The fastest way to type '08 or "sure 'nuff" with the correctly slanted apostrophe is to press and hold the CTRL key while pressing the apostrophe-quote key, then immediately pressing the apostrophe-quote key again without pressing the CTRL key.
I always loved discussions like this in my Linguistics classes way back when. I must say that more than half of the 10 Mistakes are ones I'm guilty of…now I know. [Alt-;]
Everyone's comments were just as interesting as the article and provided some additional knowledge. Thanks!
who care's?
Wow. Least. Important. Blog. Post. Ever.
Is this for real...or did I stumble into a bizarro world of semi-robotic humanoids who hold their shit in three days at a time?
Your knowledge on the subject is vaguely impressive, but seriously...if you're working in a ``word processing'' program, then why are you wasting years of your life worrying about the particular angle of those floating little lines around your quoted text and the exact vertical placement of a decimal separator? If you're really that into precise typographic marks, as the mediocre foreign fellow above said, then you should be doing everything in TeX or variant, and rendering in dvi.
According to the 2007 Associated Press Style book, em dashes most certainly do have a space both before and after. If you're going to pick on others' typos, at least get it right.
I have to call you out on one additional error. Actually, this is more of a preference than a strict rule, but I follow it because it makes sense (and because Robert Bringhurst says so).
Although parentheses and brackets are sloped in many italic fonts, you should skip those and use the vertical parentheses and brackets from the roman font.
So, in your second-to-last example, the "Fix" type in orange has sloped brackets. I would say nix those and use italics for letters only.
Call them "mistakes" or "errors" all you like. Language is forever fluid and ever-changing. Under those conditions, it is quite impossible to make an "error" or "mistake". What one does frequently is violate convention. Although this tends to irritate many, it is nevertheless acceptable and appropriate. Languages evolve whether one likes it or not, just as individuals, groups, cultures and the species as a whole. There is no question one evolves despite one's attitudes toward language and the language usage of others. The question is, will you evolve and allow others to evolve without all the whining.
Is that a regular period character for 3.5" and 5.25" on the last tip? What happened to the mid-line interpunct?
«en français»
Actually, when writing in French there should be non-breaking spaces inside the quotes, like this « en français »
The example is also a bit unclear since if you quote French inside an English text you have to use the English quotes.
When I type what I always thought was the masculine ordinal character on an Italian keyboard, I get what looks exactly like the degrees symbol!
Have generations of Italian writers been misled to type the wrong symbol?
Clarification:
Italian keyboard, dedicated key (shift-à):
° (degree symbol according to char palette)
Italian keyboard, alt-k:
º (masculine ordinal)
US layout, alt-0:
º (masculine ordinal)
US layout, alt-shift-8:
° (degree symbol)
So, the key millions of Italian always thought was (and used) for the masculine ordinal was the degree symbol! The irony...
Thanks for pointing this out...
According to Stunk & White, an ellipsis is three periods with spaces between them, like so: . . .
Is this no longer correct?
Bowerbird, your thinking is contrary to the vast majority of chattering typographers, most of whom argue against the two-space rule saying it's ancient Victoriana passed along by typing teachers to the present day. Could you please explain further why you believe we should revert to two spaces between sentences? I am baffled.
bowerbird,
How can you be so right about em dashes and so wrong about spaces?
I'm a retired typesetter, and I spent a lot of my life removing your double spaces.
Oh well, I'm retired now and leave it all up to you younger folk. In some way, it is nice that anyone cares with so much garbage out there. Since the computer changed the definition of the pica and point, nothing can be thought of as chiseled in stone.
Carry on.
Here I thought there would be some great tips, not stuff that people INTENTIONALLY ignore.
Just about all these useless tips are for people to migrate from something like ISO8859-15 to UTF-8 nazi correctness.
UTF-8 is great for certain languages, typesetting and graphics. But that's about it, it's very slow, mostly insecure and should never be used for system messages.
The day I start using hyphens, dashes, dots and parantheses other than '"-.() is the day pigs fly. The qwerty keyb is already crowded with keys, we need to start using LESS chars.
Fantastic. Amen.
However, "fashion" does not dictate typography any more than it dictates grammar and spelling, so I beg to differ over the em dash, which has in no way been replaced by a spaced en dash.
An additional pet peeve: in any proportionally spaced font, only one space is needed after a period or colon.
And, some may want to know that WordPerfect makes it easy for a Windows user to put these within easy reach of their fingers. Unlike the competing product.
I was just skimming through your article, and I can't really disagree with much. However, I tried typing the interpunct using shift-alt-9, and nothing happened. I tried it in Word, Notepad, and a browser. So, not really a fix.
Why do you call the modifier keys for the Mac shortcuts "alt"? The key to which you're referring is the "option" key. It's used as the "alt" key only when restarting into Windows.
Seth,
I don't think PC people know about the "option" key. I remember reading, many years ago, that the only reason for a "control" key on a Mac keyboard was to make PC people feel more at home.
Now "control" actually does stuff.
And I just reread this whole thing (who mentioned "anal"?) and noticed the plea from the iPhone guy.
We had an interesting discussion once about what the language will look like when the text messagers start having a permanent effect.
Some of your points are specific to British English. Not to mention that different style guides don't even agree on everything - AP uses spaces around the m-dash and Chicago doesn't. I'll bet you have some good ranting to do about the use of the serial comma.
First, as stated above, you're simply wrong about decimals.
Second, since most applications do not contain all fraction combinations, if you use 3/64 or 5/16 you should also use 1/2 and 1/4. Consistency makes it easier to understand documents; don't switch back and forth. And while we're on this subject, 3½", 3 1/2", or even 3-1/2" is wrong. Unless you're making a chart, it should be 3½ inches. Also, use the words for low (whole) numbers and multiples of ten. But if you have a mix of all numbers, be consistent and use numerals.
Third - and it's not your's - double spaces are appropriate and advantageous between sentences. They offset sentences from one another, and distinguish them from abbreviations (Hey Mr. Over here. Is that Mr. Over, or an anonymous mister?) Now that most word processors automatically kern spacing, especially in full justify mode, the spaces between sentences can disappear. The double space prevents this, and makes it much easier for the reader to recognize the end of the sentence.
Oh, yeah. It's "[like these two]," not "[like these ones]." Which illustrates a last freebie: punctuation goes inside "quotations", not after them. [sic]
Well, two freebies. The [sic] is italicized to show it a foreign word or phrase.
Absolutely love the article and comments.
As I understand things, two spaces after periods was standard when typewriters were standard because typewriters only offered "mono" fonts, not proportional fonts. You needed two spaces after periods because a single space was visually similar to the native space which appeared around narrow characters such as i and l (and a period, for that matter).
As for ellipses, when I'm doing serious typesetting I type three periods separated by spaces and then kern them manually to match the surrounding text. Yes, this is anal, but it's the only way to get an ellipsis that doesn't jump off the page, to my mind. With search and replace capabilities, I can put my "perfect" ellipses throughout a document — if the author was consistent in the first place, which he or she seldom is.
For folks that can’t use or don’t want to use the Mac solutions above, having the hex unicode values is handy:
2032 Prime (’)
2033 Double Prime (″ )
00D7 By/Multiply (×)
00F7 Divide Sign (÷)
2215 Divide Slash (/)
2212 Minus (-)
2018 Left Single Quote (‘)
2019 Right Single Quote (’)
201C Left Double Quote (“)
201D Right Double Quote (”)
00B0 Degree (°)
2013 En Dash (–)
2014 Em Dash (—)
2026 Ellipsis (…)
00B7 Middle Dot/Interpunct (·)
2219 Bullet Operator (·)
2022 Bullet (•)
Check the url I entered as my “homepage” for the AutoHotKey script I made after reading this article. Now in Windows I can observe the conventions written about here, sometimes without trying. Good ol’ AutoHotKey!
Thanks to tysiva for the clue. BabelMap was needed, too.
*yawn*
By the way, you have a typographical error in the paragraph about hyphens. The word 'the' is typed twice in a row on the third to last line.
People who think any of this matters is why I need sedatives.
Nah, Grammar Nazis reign supreme simply by sheer numbers. All people speak, some people type.
anyway…
@@@Dave! Oh yes, I hate those double spaces after periods too! Absolutely hate ’em.
But that’s enough from me, because clearly I need to run away and examine my life priorities…
Thom | 03.31.08 - 5:00 pm | #
WHAT??? Double spaces are ALWAYS placed after a period to make it easier to read.
Finally, someone as much of a Type-A(nal) as I am!
Kudos for educating the ones who are still kicking and screaming.
Jeffrey Rutzky | 03.31.08 - 6:52 pm | #
THE ONES = THOSE. PLEASE just say THOSE.
WOW. You have to much time!.
Taylr | Homepage | 03.31.08 - 10:18 pm | #
No, you spend TOO little time learning proper english.
who care's?
snork | 04.19.08 - 1:58 am | #
PLEASE tell me that was a hurtful joke. Learn to use an apostrophe properly, then learn how to type it correctly.
Call them "mistakes" or "errors" all you like. Language is forever fluid and ever-changing. Under those conditions, it is quite impossible to make an "error" or "mistake". What one does frequently is violate convention. Although this tends to irritate many, it is nevertheless acceptable and appropriate. Languages evolve whether one likes it or not, just as individuals, groups, cultures and the species as a whole. There is no question one evolves despite one's attitudes toward language and the language usage of others. The question is, will you evolve and allow others to evolve without all the whining.
Ricky Barnes | Homepage | 04.19.08 - 7:11 am | #
Assuming what you say about “forever fluid and ever changing” is true, it may be sorrily acceptable, but it is NEVER appropriate.
Anyway.. _it’s_ = _IT IS_. if you mean possessive _its_ then type _its_. Just like _his_ and _hers_ have no apostrophes, but are still possessive.
Same with _You’re_ instead of _your_.
This has all nothing to do with how typewriters were built (computers are no typewriters) or how the computer keyboard was designed. Actually you can do all that now in the great Unicode world, but in the good old ASCII world, there were only 127 characters and 32 of these were control characters I think, thus there was not enough room for having all these great characters in every font; and honestly, why would anyone care? When I stop using computers and start using hand writing again, nobody can say what kind of characters I've been using, as many simply will look the same.
Latex makes all of this easy if only for print and pdf.
I love this list, although I was disappointed when I read the decimals one was incorrect. I was looking forward to making up for years of neglecting the middot.
None of these key shortcuts worked on Linux/KDE/OpenOffice Writer 2.3.1. While the article briefly mentions OSX and Windows, it doesn't say anything about Linux. I guess there is too much difficulty in writing the article to include other popular systems and applications.
Word (for Windows, anyhow) properly corrects the direction of years in example 2.
nice info. also, what does this come under: orange on light gray = impossible to read?."'`
Wow, sorry man, I mean I'm a grammar nazi and all (usually), but methinks this just takes the details a hair too far. Now, if you're writing a term paper or some other published work, these details are important. For everything else, especially and including the internet, this is just a waste of time. Let's work on grammar, spelling, punctuation, and the abolition of l33t speak first.
It depends on your distribution medium. If your going to distribute the material as a printed media, this list is okay. However, you forgot many typographical conventions such as ligatures. If the material is going to be distributed electronically, everything in this list is very, very wrong. Couldn't be more wrong. You're basically ensuring that anyone other than another user of your specific configuration (Mac, M$, *nix) will see garbage. For people who care about the typographical presentation in electronically distributed media, learn about the UTF standards.
You made another common typographical error: you didn't hang the punctuation in the first example.
http://realworldstyle.com/
hang_p...hang_punct.html
Your explanation of hyphens (dashes), em, and en dashes is only partly correct, according to the world of large print magazines anyway (Time Inc., Conde Nast, Hearst, etc.).
In my experience, a hyphen is used as you say (ready-made), however en dashes are used for both describing ranges (2–4 inches of snow) as well as with compound modifiers, such as "the United States–born presidential candidate."
Em dashes are reserved without spaces before or after for phrases that are offset for dramatic or parenthetical reasons—such as this shocking example right here, or perhaps to list something like apples, oranges, or pears, when a colon won't do—in the middle of a sentence, and often at the end—if something important is tacked on.
Generally em dashes come off as sloppy copy, and en dashes are serious Nazi-copyeditor territory.
Oh and also in print magazines you never put a double space after a period. And elilpses are always 4 periods long.... with special spacing, too!
Thank you for an excellent article!
The “primes” aren't as difficult to fix as you suggest.
Prime:
option+shift+e
Double-prime:
option+shift+g
JESUS CHRIST!
So its because of PEOPLE LIKE YOU who want that god damn open/close quote so your girlish article can look pretty? Why not dot the I's with hearts?
This is a search-and-replace nightmare, not to mention what happens with database and character sets. Try cut and pasting code from a word document into a terminal.. bleh!!! Your a dumb ass
.
.
awesome, thank you for taking the time to post these! I learned some, and laughed some!
oh buzz off. First, all of your fixes DON'T WORK. Not a SINGLE ONE works.
Secondly, nobody gives a damn. ANYWHERE.
these are round brackets "()" dumbshit!
Your fractions are wrong, so nitpicking about them is inane. Numerators and denominators are supposed to be separated by a HORIZONTAL line.
Source: Any textbook on mathematics, ever.
Two of your issues are easily resolved with non-typographic solutions. Stop using feet and inches and/or fractions. Join the rest of the world and use SI. … [or if I'm really sticking my nose in it ;—) ]
"I am 5' 10" tall" easily becomes "I am 178cm tall" and "3 1/2″ and 5 1/4″ disks are obsolete" could become "89mm and 133mm disks are obsolete" or even more simply "Floppy disks are obsolete"
I've never made any of these mistakes. Oh, by the by, the "interpunct" is only used with pound sterling, not with any other worldwide currency.
Have you ever heard about Textile, the Humane Web Text Generator?
http://textile.thresholdstate.com/
It takes into consideration some of the common errors and fix them automagically.
You need to be banned from the interwebs... there is no browser agnostic way (or system agnostic way) to do most of what you are recommending. A mac doesn't use alt codes for characters, many browsers don't render the characters you are recommending. If I followed your advice most of my sites would have a bunch of question marks all over the place.
I love the fact that at least two people in the comments have negated their own arguments by using YOUR instead of YOU'RE.
Be careful riding those high horses: it's a long way to fall.
Of course, now we have word processors that do smart quotes for us automatically, everything's cushty, right?
When writing an article like this, you should probably run the spell checker over it at least once before publishing.
I know it's CSS based but surely setting the text to be grey but not the background of your text to be white is a huge error. I can't see they typography for the background!
I have a different default browser colour scheme and except for the orange, the text is invisible.
Simple fix:
body{
background: #fff;
}
You should probably learn the distinction between "font" and "typeface" before writing any further.
Great points except for one.
Let's leave the "fuckups" For the lockerroom, bar, and moments of anger.
according to the MLA Handbook, ellipses (yes, true ellipses) should include spaces on either side. thought you might want to know.
Welcome to the new millenium. Let's focus on solving a whole slew of other more pressing problems. I wonder how these "Readers Digest" style articles - Top 10 this and that - make it to digg all the while.
And oh yes, my quotes are not the sixty-six and ninety-nine versions. I could give a rat's ass. In fact, I do prefer the straight quotes and apostrophes. Call it new design style.
@ Woo
Wait ... don't pop my bubble! I thought "cushty" was a new word. I loved it!
Most of you are right, this is totally irrelevant to the ordinary person.
However.
As a graphic design student, this stuff is really important. I've discovered that design firms are extremely picky about even the most miniscule, obscure mistake on a resume.
But I worry about it when I'm designing, not when I'm commenting on blogs.
@woo, zavigny
"Cushty" is a perfectly valid word in colloquial Cockney, the east London dialect.
The problem with typography and the internet is that many web applications, such as my Wordpress blogs, do not know how to deal well with unicode characters. Therefore, everytime I upgrade my blog, all of my 'correct' typography turns to gobbledy-gook, and I have to go through several days of reformatting to fix it.
Until that problem is solved…well, I shall continue to offend the typography nazis.
K, sorry to burst your bubble, but does anyone really care? This is the most anal retentive post I have read in the last month.
Damian is correct about the brackets/parantheses issue. I studied English in England for three years. They use brackets to refer to
what American's call parantheses. Just as a period is called a full stop in Britain.
In general, the difference in usage of paranthese and square brackets isn't important unless your writing research papers that use a lot of quotations that you're having to alter slightly to fit your sentence (and thus using [] to indicate a change to the text).
It is however good to know, especially in an age when your ability to source information is more important than the information you contain in your head. Correct use of typographical conventions is a signifier of the reliability of the material you are using. Just a thought.
Nice comment Aimee.
Offended,
Ba