For art in printing is not the way
Of wild extravagance, weird display,
But rather the unobtrusive thrall
Of type that gives you no shock at all,
But draws your eye to the page with zest
And holds your mind to the thought expressed;
We must keep ourselves to this simple creed,
Type was made - and is meant - to READ!

Unfortunately, the source provided no citation.

However, it’s the difference wherein the interest lies. Unlike obsessing about straight versus typographic quotes this is more straightforwardly a “semantic” issue about the significance of embedding material within quotations. But the actual usage of quotation is quite complex as anyone familiar with the recent philosophical literature on quotation will attest. Far more complex than the simple semantics implicit in the charge of rampant use/mention conflation. Personally I abhor the use of quotation marks for emphasis, but the my distaste for it is simply that, distaste. It’s vulgar and largely confined to cheap marketing.

Semantic drift is a reality. Don’t fear change. It will only result in needless rage.

Legislation that has not kept abreast of changing technology can make the choice difficult.

As a philosopher, I write research papers, drafts of which are distributed on the web as PDFs. Open access to evolving research is important, and I am committed to it. Since I want to give my work the best chance of being understood, I take the time to properly typeset the PDFs with XeLaTeX. There is a problem, however, with distributing PDFs over the web.

PDF files can contain font information in a way that is easily extractable from the file. While the licensing of some type foundries allow embedded fonts in PDFs, many (especially smaller type foundries) do not. Indeed the ones that did probably did so at Adobe’s urging when PDF distribution on the web was relatively small and so not that great of a risk.

I would like to support small type foundries by buying their fonts. There are some brilliant type designers out there, and they should be rewarded. Unfortunately, since the main thing I want these fonts for is for web distributed PDFs, I can’t do that without violating licensing restrictions. And that’s not support.

There are of course open source fonts. Some of them are fine pieces of work. But the choice is limited, and important design decisions should not be so constrained.

DRM is not the answer, as the recent history of music distribution online sadly reveals.

I don’t know how to resolve this problem. It is partly technological, partly, legal. But I thought I would highlight for other academics who distribute their work online.

Upon finishing this post, I came across this essay that has more information about the legal and technological obstacles with some discussion of potential solutions.

Kurt Vonnegut called the marks “transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing.” Hemingway and Chandler and Stephen King, said McIntyre, “wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch with a semi-colon (though Truman Capote might). Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don’t use semi-colons.”

Typographic rage rears its ugly head again!

I am unsure what about the semicolon could raise such ire. It is true that I rarely, if at all, use semicolons. But this a manifestation of neither principle nor ill-will. At one point, in a desperate bid to improve the clarity of my writing, I resolved to write in a ruthlessly simple manner. My prose has since loosened up (and continued to improve, I hope). But in moving away from an adolescent penchant for syntactic complexity, I seem to have lost my grip on when, exactly, to deploy semicolons. So no anti-semicolon policy, just punctuation ignorance.

Paul Collins reports that semicolon rage is far from new:

When the Times of London reported in 1837 on two University of Paris law profs dueling with swords, the dispute wasn’t over the fine points of the Napoleonic Code. It was over the point-virgule: the semicolon. “The one who contended that the passage in question ought to be concluded by a semicolon was wounded in the arm,” noted the Times. “His adversary maintained that it should be a colon.”

(Slate, unlike the Boston Globe, helpfully provides a plethora of external links.)

Paul Butterworth, in a piece published in the Financial Times, seeks a rationale for what might otherwise appear to be an irrational hostility. Unfortunately, the rationale is spurious, and the hostility is manifestly irrational. What we get is the chicken little rant familiar from prescriptivist grammarians transposed to the typographic:

“The most common abuse of the semicolon, at least in journalism,” explains Kinsley, “is to imply a relationship between two statements without having to make clear what that relationship is. I suppose there are worse crimes in the world. (I don’t know if Osama bin Laden uses semicolons or not.) But Fred did have it right.”

Real men don’t use semicolons; though maybe Al Qaeda does. ;P

I am Unicode, thy character set. Thou shalt have no other character sets before me.

Grammar nazis are so last century. Welcome, friends, to the brave new world of the typography nazi.

Help make cognitive therapy an effective counter meme.

Perhaps we need to recognize another malady—typographic rage. Recently manifest not only in the “dumb quotes” backlash, but in John Gruber’s response as well:

These people should be issued IBM Selectrics and have their computers taken away.

Funny, even if an anger management issue.

Just as word rage may be treated by a course of cognitive therapy, the treatment might be applied as well to typographic rage. The measured discussion of the issue by the Ministry of Type was thus a welcome contribution. Unfortunately, many of the arguments advanced there don’t withstand scrutiny:

In the end, I would say that of course it is always preferable to use type correctly, but typography is the servant of meaning, not the master. If straight quotes, however much of a modern bastardisation of type they may seem, enhance the meaning of a piece (or if curved quotes would distract the reader), then you must use them. Otherwise, don’t.

Now, as a loyal Language Log reader, I am loathe to think of myself as a prescriptivist—even of a typographic stripe. Semantic drift is a reality. Linguistic and typographic conventions are subject to change. And that’s a good thing. Language and typography need to adapt to the changing needs of shifting social, economic, and technological realities. But what the Ministry of Type failed to demonstrate is the enchanced meaning allegedly incurred by the use of straight quotes. And without that, no case has been made for semantic drift in this instance.

One needn’t be a prescriptivist to fear zombies—persistent linguistic and typographic conventions intelligible only in the context of dead technologies and practices from which they arose.

SmartyPants is a free web publishing plug-in for Movable Type, Blosxom, and BBEdit that easily translates plain ASCII punctuation characters into “smart” typographic punctuation HTML entities.

PHP SmartyPants Typographer adds extra features a full list of which can be found here. Don’t be a dumb zombie, life is for the living—and the typographically correct.

Following Daringfireball’s link to Apostrphe Atrophy (whose site seems to be down, hopefully termporarily), there was a flurry of comments on MetaFilter militating in favor of straight quotes:

I always turn off “smart quotes” in Word. I think it looks pretentious.

I agree! Up with the “dumb quotes” backlash!

“i hate smart quotes”

Yeah, smart quotes are ugly. I’d rather people target usage (groce’rs quotes, I’m looking at you) before aesthetics.

This is perplexing, but an article Quote, Unquote over at the Ministry of Type offers an explanation for the “dumb quotes” backlash:

So why the problem? Why do some people prefer straight quotes? Perhaps it has something to do with how the symbols are perceived. If you type something and the program you’re using changes it, then your first reaction may well be one of resentment, “How dare this program claim to know better than me!?” If what it changed it to is better, for example, a spelling correction, then you will accept it and move on. However, if it made what appears to be a superficial change, a stylistic correction, then it is more likely your resentment will remain, and you’ll go looking for that know-it-all option in the program preferences and self-righteously turn it off.

The rationale is plausible, but turns on a conflation. “Smart quotes” does not refer to a kind of character—the typographic quotes. It is rather the automatic replacement of straight quotes with the correct typographic quotes. Invented by David Dunham smart quotes first appeared in miniWRITER and then in Acta, the venerable Mac outliner. Dunham describes the history of smart quotes here. So please, hate the algorithm, not the character!

Another aspect of the controversy that I take issue with is the assimilation of typography with aesthetics. Typography can be beautiful—often breathtakingly so. But beauty is not the sole or even the most important aim of good typography—comprehension is. Typography has cognitive utility. The assimilation of typography to aesthetics encourages another conflation (alas, operative, as well, in the otherwise excellent Ministry of Type article)—straight and typographic quotes are not stylistic variant of the same character, they are different characters, as different as “5” and “k”. A single quote semantically differs from the prime symbol. And there is genuine cognitive utility in being able to explicitly mark this difference in your typography.

What is aggravating about the “dumb quotes” backlash is the way that it is a hangover from the limitations of a dead technology—the typewriter. The undead continue to walk the earth. Then again, maybe this is just a promotional stunt for Romero’s Diary of the Dead.

defaults write com.apple.mail NSPreferredMailCharset "UTF-8"

As I have posted earlier, you should be using UTF-8 for all your plain text needs. Dont trust me? Then trust Allan.

Steve Matteson of Ascender Corporation has designed the Droid Typeface Family for the Open Handest Alliance’s Android platform. Released under the Apache license, Droid Sans Mono is an attractive monospace font.

It is not without its limitations, however:

1. No bold variant
2. No italic variant
3. No slashed zero

Nevertheless, given its licensing, perhaps these limitations will be addressed in time.

Based on the sans serif typeface Akzidenz Grotesk, Helvetica was designed by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry (later assimilated by Linotype). Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, its name was updated to Helvetica apparently derived from the latin name for Switzerland—Helvetia. Caught up in an enthusiasm for Swiss modernist design, Helvetica became popular among add agencies and is now ubiquitous. If you get a chance, try to see the movie. At the very least, show some respect and don’t confuse it with Arial.

It is not only themes that elicit this obsessive-compulsive behavior but monospace fonts as well. While I find that proportional fonts, especially serif fonts, are easier to read, I much prefer writing with a monospace font. Even if my text editor supported proportional fonts, I wouldn’t use them. Fortunately, the asynchronous WYSIWYG nature of LaTeX allows me the best of both worlds. I write the LaTeX source in a text editor with a monospace font. And when I edit, I read the PDF it produces with a proportional font (currently Hoefler). Monospace fonts that I have used include Bitstream Vera Sans Mono and its updated variant with more characters DejaVu Sans Mono. I have also used ProFont and Inconsolata. Raph Levien, the designer of Inconsolata and maintainer of Ghostscript was inspired by Luc(as) de Groot’s Consolas. Consolas is currently my favorite monospace font. And it is a Microsoft product! Must be penance for Comic Sans. It really is a beautiful monospace font but be sure to turn on font smoothing to see it at its best. Curious? Download your copy of Consolas here.

Here is a picture courtesy of Poynter Online: