Weebly posted:

Nyuk nyuk nyuk- Curly

credburn posted:

What's a curly quote?

Platystemon posted:

The prime’s name may not be familiar, but you will have seen it as the slanted mark sometimes used to denote units of feet or minutes.


…I’ll have a large Vanilla Frosty®. Thanks.

Baron von Eevl posted:

Some software gets hosed up if you use curly quotes, such as the patchwork-rear end stuff I need for work, so I immediately disable smartquotes. I don't need my letter returning error messages because I drafted an additional comment in word and pasted it in. Sorry if the double prime isn't curly enough for you.

Platystemon posted:

misc. typographical absurdities

Platystemon posted:

You are cursed.

You cannot unlearn this knowledge, and it will bother you for the rest of your days.



Maybe they’ll gently caress up your tombstone.

Tree Bucket posted:

Aha! That's why our ancient typewriter doesn't have a "1" key. Minor mystery solved.
Now can you tell us why in page numbers, particularly in older books, the numerals are all wonky heights?

Platystemon posted:

Maybe they’ll gently caress up your tombstone.

Bloody Hedgehog posted:

Here Lies

p'eperony and
"cheese"

Platystemon posted:

Those are text figures.

They’ve fallen out of use generally, with “lining figures” used by almost everyone anymore.

Platystemon posted:

You are cursed.

You cannot unlearn this knowledge, and it will bother you for the rest of your days.



Maybe they’ll gently caress up your tombstone.

Baron von Eevl posted:

Some software gets hosed up if you use curly quotes, such as the patchwork-rear end stuff I need for work, so I immediately disable smartquotes. I don't need my letter returning error messages because I drafted an additional comment in word and pasted it in. Sorry if the double prime isn't curly enough for you.

Gravitas Shortfall posted:

Anyway, the important thing is to double space after every full-stop.

Lobok posted:

Buncha goons getting salty about punctuation in this thread, are you all on your periods?

Platystemon posted:

Typewriters only had one key to to print both opening (‘) and closing (’) quotation marks, as well as standing in for the apostrophe and the prime (′). The prime’s name may not be familiar, but you will have seen it as the slanted mark sometimes used to denote units of feet or minutes.

Early computers inherited this. ASCII has the APOSTROPHE (') which does all of the above roles, plus the double QUOTATION MARK ("), used for opening quotation marks (“), closing quotation marks (”), double primes (e.g. denoting inches or seconds).

Early computers continued this madness by having a key for the “backtick” (`) and tilde (~), which on a typewriter would both be used by backspacing—which moves the position the next mark will be struck in a space to the left, but does not lift the ink off the paper—and then overstriking to give you like “piñata” or ”crème brûlée”, the latter also demonstrating the circumflex accent, which programmers call the “caret” (^) when used by itself.

These should not exist as distinct glyphs occupying their own position on the screen, and yet, they do. Mercifully, ASCII did not follow typewriter practice in using the same glyph for a lowercase ‘l’ and the numeral ‘1’. Those symbols are confusing in typefaces that mimic typewriters because on most typewriters, they were struck by the same physical piece of metal. Of course they look identical.

Printers (as in, the occupation) also had a bunch of similar glyphs to work with that ASCII condensed to the hyphen‐minus (-), but almost no one cares about these, except perhaps when two of them (--) stand in for em dash (—), which just looks wrong. The em dash gets its name because it is approximately the same width as a Latin letter ‘m’. There is also an en dash, the width of an ‘n’.

The absolute silliest arguments on Wikipedia are over whether things like the Spanish–American War should be typeset with an en dash (–), same width as an ‘n’, or with a hyphen (or hyphen‐minus), a hair shorter. The en dash is correct. It is used for things like a range of numbers, 6–9, or a connexion, like London–Paris.


tl;dr: Unless you’re getting paid to care, just turn on “smart quotes” and let software handle nineteen in twenty cases correctly .

Even professionals gently caress it up all the time with stuff like opening single quotes when they should be using apostrophes (e.g. ’60s decor) or primes (e.g. 10′ pole). These mistakes are a consequence of using “smart quotes”, which assume that anything preceded by a space is intended as a quotation mark and don’t know that primes even exist.


…I’ll have a large Vanilla Frosty®. Thanks.

a sexual elk posted:

Imagine spending your life becoming the go to guy for this, then like 3 people knowing what the gently caress you’re talking about

syntaxfunction posted:

Punctuation pedantry is dumb as hell but what does this mean?

Lobok posted:

Buncha goons getting salty about punctuation in this thread, are you all on your periods?

syntaxfunction posted:

Punctuation pedantry is dumb as hell but what does this mean?

Platystemon posted:

The presses deafened you and gave you lead poisoning, and then in 1978 the bosses made your job redundant via computerization.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MGjFKs9bnU

a sexual elk posted:

Imagine spending your life becoming the go to guy for this, then like 3 people knowing what the gently caress you’re talking about

Hollow Talk posted:

code:

\usepackage{csquotes}

…

code:

\enquote{These \enquote{quotes} are very flexible}

Platystemon posted:

You cannot unlearn this knowledge

Tree Bucket posted:

I wonder about the stonemason who was commissioned to carve the tombstones for Edith Tolkien and JRR Tolkien. "Luthien? With a what over the letter i????"

Velocity Raptor posted:

Antigravitas posted:

gently caress you

Antigravitas posted:

gently caress you

Sentient Data posted:

"""IMPORTANT"""

We have had lots of reports about forms using incorrect punctuation. Make sure all your TPS's are correctly signed and do not use any errant capital comma's

Velocity Raptor posted: