Reader Cheryl Diner writes:

I love Erik’s Typo Tips, how­ever, under the “Quotable Quotes” where he is show­ing exam­ples it shows (“this”). In this exam­ple and also where the (“99”.) is shown the comma and period are mis­placed. They should always be placed inside a clos­ing quote.

I asked Erik if his style was Euro­pean:

It is. But I take issue with the Amer­i­can style: I always put the period or comma where the con­text needs it. If the quote has a point after it, like a com­plete sen­tence, it’s included in the quote:

Grou­cho Marx said, “I wouldn’t join a club that accepted me as a member.”

(Now, there should log­i­cally be a second full point to finish the sen­tence around the quote, but in German, we neglect that.) But:

He always got gas at the “76”.

Putting them inside the clos­ing quote is an aes­thetic deci­sion, not a gram­mat­i­cal one, but it is Amer­i­can usage.

I can’t imag­ine how awk­ward it would be to always hit key­strokes for every single con­trac­tion. I did it for the word can’t above and it was odd. Why isn’t it the stan­dard for the key­board but­tons and are there ways of pro­gram­ming those char­ac­ters to show up for the stan­dard quote/apostrophe keys (on a mac)?

I *CRINGE* :) when­ever I see all-​caps used. Ital­ics look so much better.

These are excel­lent tips though!

Thanks for the post. Inter­est­ing com­ment on the use of the en dash to sep­a­rate thoughts. I’ve always liked the look of what he’s sug­gest­ing, but I’ve thought the con­ven­tional use of the em dash is an unbreak­able typog­ra­phy rule.

Onur,

The use of an em dash to sep­a­rate thoughts is some­what of an old con­ven­tion - Robert Bringhurst states that it is remenis­cent of “Vic­to­rian era” typog­ra­phy, and has since been super­seded by the padded en dash.

Per­son­ally, I feel that there are no unbreak­able rules in any design dis­ci­pline, and typog­ra­phy is one of them. How­ever, one must know the rules in order to break them.

The padded en dash is ugly. The em dash is easier to type and looks better. Bringhurst is wrong; the em dash has not been super­seded.

Rick, I too have a fond­ness for the em dash. How­ever, I also have to give a nod to Mr Bringhurst, in that if you look at books from 100 years ago and books from today you will almost cer­tainly find that use of the em dash has been dras­ti­cally reduced. That is not to say that it should be! How­ever, I fear that as the em dash is now so unfa­mil­iar to the aver­age reader, its use can be dis­tract­ing. This goes against the first rule of type, that it should trans­par­ently convey the mes­sage. In my expe­ri­ence, many clients (and design­ers) have never heard of an en dash, let alone a padded en, and are utterly con­fused as to how to use them. They gen­er­ally are used to seeing hyphens (aaaaagh!) and will gen­er­ally baulk at a full em dash. Whilst free­lanc­ing, I was even told by a so-​called “art direc­tor” to replace all my en dashes with hyphens “because he liked it like that”. God help typog­ra­phy, and long live the em dash!

under the “Quotable Quotes” where he is show­ing exam­ples it shows (“this”). In this exam­ple and also where the (“99”.) is shown the comma and period are mis­placed. They should always be placed inside a clos­ing quote.

Ugh! This is one of my pet peeves when I read copy. The response to that ques­tion is entirely cor­rect and I only wish more people would follow that advise. I think the only thing that irri­tates me more when read­ing copy is when people use the inches and feet sym­bols instead of proper quo­ta­tion marks.

Why doesn’t anyone bring up, or elab­o­rate more, on the single and double prime char­ac­ters for feet and inches? Are the key­board straight up and down hash marks becom­ing defacto cor­rect after all even with the purists?

How grat­i­fied I am to read I’ve been doing the right thing all along! I’ve always sur­rep­ti­tously used “space endash space” instead of emdashes with no gap either side, house style be damned. I’ve always thought emdashes look awful. Another pos­si­bly dodgy habit of mine is to flush bul­leted items against the margin and run the copy into an unhy­phen­ated, ragged hang­ing indent. Nobody else seems to do this but I don’t care. So there.

I sud­denly have an urge to know about typog­ra­phy and this arti­cle is very help­ful - very clear expla­na­tion and fluid dis­cus­sion.

Thanks for these short and sweet tips, I’ll have to send my stu­dents over to your blog more often. :)

Also, I’d like to add my vote with Rick and Paul in the use of em-​dashes, I love using them. Regard­less, thanks for the tip regard­ing the padded en-​dash and I will cer­tainly keep it in mind when­ever cri­tiquing others’ work.

One last thing, as I didn’t see anyone else com­ment on it. You indi­cated:

Begin­ning quotes are found on the Mac by press­ing option-[; clos­ing quotes, option-shift-].

In my U.S. Mac key­board, to begin quotes is actu­ally option-[ and clos­ing them is option-shift-[

Begin­ning single quotes are found on the Mac by press­ing option-[; the apos­tro­phe and clos­ing single quote, option-shift-].

To begin single quotes in my U.S. Mac key­board, the key com­bi­na­tion is option-] and clos­ing single quotes is option-shift-].

Hope this helps!
:) Cheers!

You’re absolutely right, Robert. Thanks for the cor­rec­tion. I’ve cor­rected the arti­cle.

The form of the quotes depend on the lan­guage (french dif­fers from dutch quotes) and the type design. The orig­i­nal Bulmer has very spe­cial quotes. In the Adobe/Linotype ver­sion they were reversed for the PS-​fonts. In OT one can have both ver­sions.

When I edited at Har­court Brace Jovanovich, my knuck­les would have been rapped had I ever used a padded en (in fact, the man­ag­ing editor of my divi­sion declared that the en dash was an ugly hybrid that didn’t belong in print). How­ever, I still harbor a pref­er­ence for the padded en, and only reluc­tantly resort to the plain em dash (which in some fonts is hor­rif­i­cally elon­gated). But it could be worse: one of my clients insists on double dashes with no spaces on either side.

As a mag­a­zine designer, when­ever I have been forced to use em dashes in a font in which they are hor­rif­i­cally elon­gated (which is ironic, because an em dash is sup­posed to have a rigidly defined length), I have scaled the em dashes hor­i­zon­tally, usu­ally around 75%. You get the effect of an em dash but it is less obtru­sive.

(Per­son­ally I prefer padded ens, though.)

Regard­ing the em dash and padded em dash, I’ve found that padding with a thin space in InDe­sign (Shift+Option+Command M) is a happy medium between padding and no padding. Call me a mod­er­ate.

Finally clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the period/quotation thing! That’s been annoy­ing me all year!

Sandy (May 3, 2008) A pet peeve of mine is when people get “advise” and “advice” mixed up.

I wonder about Cap­i­tal­iza­tion of words for Extra Empha­sis. I per­son­ally cringe when I see them in overuse. Any thoughts?

which is ironic, because an em dash is sup­posed to have a rigidly defined length

The em-​dash did in fact have a ‘rigidly defined length’ back in the day—but that’s because many metal type­faces didn’t ship with cer­tain sorts like em- and en-​dashes, paren­the­ses, com­mer­cial ats, and such. You’d buy them as extra sorts, and as such, the em-​dash was in fact 1 em wide. I sup­pose so you’d know what you were get­ting.
If you look at dig­i­tal faces how­ever, you’ll notice that em-​dashes vary con­sid­er­ably in width. Older fonts, pre­sum­ably those dig­i­tized directly from type/punches/matrices tend to have em-​sized em-​dashes. Newer fonts don’t.
Look­ing briefly at the fonts on my system, Cale­do­nia has an em wide em-​dash with no space on either side. As do Akzi­denz and Adobe Gara­mond. Cen­taur, Sabon, and Bembo’s em-​dashes are an em wide, and actu­ally kerned slightly off the sides of the body(!)—perhaps being one of the main rea­sons for this ‘back-​lash’ against em-​dashes.
Not so sur­pris­ingly, Adobe Gara­mond Premier’s em-​dash is slightly nar­rower than the em, with a bit of space on each side of the body. As is Storm’s Baskerville, and Offic­ina Serif & Sans.
Rules are great, but it seems hardly advis­able for a typog­ra­pher to have a ‘rule’ regard­ing how much space to add to either side of a dash. Being as each font already has a pre­de­fined, and wildly varied, amount of space sur­round­ing the dash already.

Agreed, Nathan. I adjust whether I use an em dash or padded en dash depend­ing on the face. I feel con­sis­tency within a giving piece is more impor­tant than which par­tic­u­lar one is used.

The padded en dash is not only ugly, it is incor­rect by most Amer­i­can gram­mar stan­dards.

Why not just use the Chicago Manual? (Or Asso­ci­ated Press, for com­mer­cial or jour­nal­is­tic writ­ing.) That will answer all ques­tions about cor­rect­ness. Some issues can be fudged for looks, but in gen­eral, follow Chicago style and you’ll be OK. Maybe I’m a purist, but I like my typog­ra­phy to be not only attrac­tive, but also unflinch­ingly cor­rect.

You write:

(…) I like my typog­ra­phy to be not only attrac­tive, but also unflinch­ingly correct.

But I believe you meant:

(…) I like my typog­ra­phy to be not only attrac­tive, but also to unflinch­ingly con­form to a spe­cific set of conventions.

Keep in mind it’s typog­ra­phy, not math­e­mat­ics. ;)