(Another lively post from our wonderful, grammatically correct, wine expert, hip fashionista and highly creative designer, Jamie Sandhurst)
In our fast paced, digital world of 2012, our grammatical and typographic etiquette has a tendency to fall by the wayside. And even those of us who are OCD, designer, typographic types make mistakes regarding the “rules” on a daily basis.
Therefore, I have taken it upon myself as one of those OCD, designer, typographic types to share a few of the most blundered “rules,” provided by Ellen Lupton in her book Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, and Students, and wittingly and comically added to by your humble author, me.
Example: These interruptions—especially the snide remarks–are driving me crazy. Crime: Two hyphens in place of an em dash. “Dashes express a break in the flow of a sentence. In a word-processed document, dashes can be indicated with two hyphens. Em dashes (—) are required, however, in typesetting. No spaces are used around dashes.”
Example: El Lissitzky lived 1890–1941. Rodchenko lived longer (1891-1956). Crime: Hyphen between numbers. “An en dash connects two numbers. It means ‘up to and including,’ not ‘between.’ No spaces are used around dashes.
Example: It’s okay to be second-best, but never, ever second–best. Crime: En dash in hyphenated word. “Do not use en dashes where the humble hyphen is required.”
Example: In the beginning was…the word….Typography came later. An ellipsis character is used here in place of separate points. “The periods in an ellipsis can be separated with word spaces, or, as we prefer, they can be tracked open (letterspaced). Most typefaces include an ellipsis character, whose points are more tightly spaced. After a sentence, use a period plus an ellipsis (four dots).
Example: She was 5’2″ with eyes of blue. “I’m not dumb,” she said. “I’m prime.” Crime: Prime marks (a.k.a. dumb quotes) used in place of quotation marks. “The purpose of prime marks, or hatch marks, is to indicate inches and feet. Their use to mark quotations is a common blight across the typographic landscape.” Some word-processing software now auto-corrects prime marks to be replaced with smart quotes. Make sure you know the difference.
Example: “I’m not smart,” he replied. “I’m a quotation mark.” “Unlike prime marks, quotation marks include an opening and closing character. Single close quotes also serve as apostrophes. Incorrectly used prime marks must be routed out and destroyed.”
Example: Don’t put two spaces between sentences. They leave an ugly gap. Crime: Two spaces between sentences. “Although writers persist in putting double spaces between sentences (a habit often learned in high school), all such spaces must be purged from a manuscript when it is set in type.” This creates extra work for us OCD, designer, typographic types. Save us from this burden by spacing less, my friend.
The space bar is not a design tool. “Don’t use the space bar to create indents (just key in a single tab), and don’t use extra spaces to create centered effects or layouts (unless you really are e. e. cummings).”
As an extra fun bonus, I’ve provided a table of keystrokes for those of us who are Mac users, so these blunders have a chance to be fixed:
