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.

As this blog is about the technology of writing, perhaps it is not too far off topic to post about its history.

The New Yorker currently has a review of The Iron Whim, A Fragmented History of the Typewriter by Darren Wershler-Henry.

While writing machines were being designed since at least the eighteenth century (many with the expressed intent of being a prosthetic device for the blind), Christopher Latham Sholes is credited as being the “father” of the typewriter as the arms manufacturer E. Remington & Sons took up his design after the American Civil War in a bid to diversify their production portfolio as the demand for rifles had dried up. Before designing the typewriter, Sholes had been working on a mechanical paginator (a need later fulfilled by procedural markup).

For those of you not yet familiar with the origins of QWERTY, the unfortunate history of yet another species of the undead is retold:

Sholes was also the author of the so-called QWERTY keyboard, which, with a few modifications, is still in use on our personal computers. (Look at the top row of your letter keys.) A problem with early typewriters was that the key arms kept getting stuck together. As the arm of the letter that had just been typed was falling back into place, it would jam against the arm rising to type the next letter, and the typist would have to stop and pry them apart. Reportedly, Sholes’s partner delegated his son-in-law, the superintendent of schools for western Pennsylvania, to draw up a list of the most common two-letter sequences in the English language. Sholes then designed the keyboard so that these pairs were separated, thus introducing a tiny delay between the activation of one letter and the next. Wershler-Henry quotes an early history of the typewriter, Bruce Bliven’s “The Wonderful Writing Machine,” to the effect that the QWERTY keyboard was in fact “considerably less efficient than if the arrangement had been left to chance.” Nevertheless, people got used to it, and it was never replaced.

Joan Acocella, the author of the review, makes an interesting observation about the difference between typing on a computer and a typewriter:

Consider, for example, our physical involvement with the typewriter, which stands in relation to our connection with the P.C. as a fistfight does to a handshake. On the P.C., we use the same typing skills that we used on the typewriter, but the contact is not the same. We run our fingers lightly over the keys, making a gentle, pitter-patter sound. On the typewriter, by contrast, we had to stab, and the machine recorded our action with a great big clack. We liked that. (As Wershler-Henry tells us, a silent typewriter was put on the market in the nineteen-forties, and nobody wanted it.) The noise told us that we had achieved something. So, in larger measure, did the carriage return—another line done!—and the job of changing the paper—another page done!

I, for one, think she is right (though perhaps this is rose colored nostalgia for the days when I used a typewriter). This kind of aural feedback is similar to the ping that is sounded when you increase or decrease the volume on a Mac—something I consider to be a good design feature. If there were a program that would generate the clatter of a typewriter as one typed, would you use it?

Once upon a time, authors would send their manuscripts to their publisher where a copy editor would mark up the manuscript with instructions for the typesetter. (The origin, by the way, of the modern conception of a markup language such as HTML, LaTeX, or Markdown—if, indeed, it is one). This was only feasible if the submitted manuscript was double spaced, thus allowing adequate space for the instructions for the typesetter. This was before electronic submissions of manuscripts and before computer typesetting.

Some conventions persist beyond their utility, and the dead continue to walk the earth.

Academics, at least, are familiar with this species of the undead. Journals regularly require that paper submissions be double spaced. Just to be clear, these are submissions for consideration for publication that are sent to internal or external referees. The referees read the submission and pass on their comments to the editor who renders a judgment as to whether the submission is publishable in such an estimable journal. Referees do not write their comments on the manuscript the way copy editors used to mark up manuscripts—so why the required double spacing?

Not only does this practice lack utility, it has positive disutility. Typesetting is not, or at least not merely, an aesthetic concern; it has genuine cognitive import. Good typesetting allows the reader to better understand the text. Double spaced manuscripts are harder to read than single spaced texts. Since the manuscript is being read by a referee whose opinion the editor is relying upon in passing judgment, shouldn’t the submitted manuscript be as easy to read as possible?

And yet the dead continue to haunt the living. Like the practice of typing two spaces after a period, some conventions just won’t die. I have tried passive aggression (submitting single spaced manuscripts), I have tried active aggression (complaining about senseless anachronistic publishing practices), but when all else fails, you just have to pony up the double spaced manuscript.

If your manuscript is written in LaTeX, it may be unobvious how to achieve this. Fortunately, the setspace package can help. It is smart enough to double space the main body of text but not, say, the footnotes. Look within the package file, setpsace.sty, for instructions.

Submit your double spaced manuscript, if you must. But do so under protest. Life is for the living.