sign in sign up
<<
Home , At sign, Bullet (typography), Copyright symbol, Dagger (mark), Degree symbol, Interpunct

MAGAZINE 41 April | May 2011 excerpt †ĥe $wėe‡ §Θunđ ¤f ¶un¢†u@t!on

INDESIGN MAGAZINE 41 April | May 2011 1 †ĥe $wėe‡ §Θunđ ¤f ¶un¢†u@t!on While gives text rhythm, some beats are more familiar than others. By Yves Peters

onts are much more than merely letters and numbers. Scroll down the menu, and you’ discover an eclectic assort- F ment of signs and symbols, punctuation, and more—some familiar, some rather obscure. When playing music the symbols above and between the notes are as important as the notes themselves. Similarly, in typesetting punctuation helps sense of the words around them. They command the rhythm of the text; tell the reader when to pause, and for how long. They have the power to make the words ask, or shout, or hesitate; they determine what the characters before or after them exactly mean; they alter how letters or words sound. Time to get (re)acquainted with this symphony of , from the common to the unusual.

INDESIGN MAGAZINE 41 April | May 2011 excerpt SUBSCRIBE NOW 2 Quotation Marks ( ’ ’, “ “ ) preferred in the United States. Most impor- Because it must tantly, you should always match opening be one of the most and closing quotation marks. When quot- Set in FF Suhmo frequently recur- ing within a quotation, alternate single and topics in arti- double quotation marks. Although you can ( ’ ) cles on typogra- enter quotation marks with dedicated key However, this phy, it’ only fair combinations, these days most applica- automatic con- to start with quo- tions—especially text editors and desktop version can pro- tation marks. A publishing software—automatically con- duce unwanted telltale sign of vert straight or “dumb“ quotes into curly or results. If a unprofessional “desktop “ is “smart“ quotes during text entry. precedes the , it converts to the use of straight quotes. These straight In InDesign, this control is called Use the opening variant. Conversely, if a charac- variants stem from the days of , Typographer’s Quotes and lives in the Type ter precedes the quotation mark, it converts whose keyboard didn’t provide sufficient pane of the Preferences dialog box. You can to the closing variant. The shape of the apos- room for separate opening and closing enable or disable this preference at any time trophe—though it has a different purpose— quotation marks. by pressing Command-Option-Shift-quote (or should be identical to the closing single As their name implies, quotation marks Ctrl-Alt-Shift-quote in Windows). quotation mark. The presence of a space enclose a quotation or direct speech, but before abbreviated years like ’11 for 2011 also a literal title or a name. Another com- incorrectly produces an opening single quo- mon use of quotation marks is to indicate tation mark, and is a very common typo- ironic or apologetic words, and to signal graphical mistake. To produce the correct unusual usage of specific words.Y ou can Set in FF Amman apostrophe in this situation, press Option/ use single and double quotes; the latter are Alt-Shift-].

INDESIGN MAGAZINE 41 April | May 2011 excerpt SUBSCRIBE NOW 3 Tracking Down Obscure Glyphs To enter some of the more obscure glyphs in your InDesign The function of the apostrophe is the designer use them for this purpose. However document, you can’t simply tap a omission of one or more letters; for example, this type of use is improper, and looks plain single key. You may even have to in contractions like “don’t“ and “isn’t“, or the wrong to Spanish and other nationalities that use a particular . For instruc- marking of possessive case, as in Charlie’s use for quotation. tions, see the “Your Guide Angels. (I think I just betrayed my age here.) that InDesign automatically replaces to Obscure Glyphs“ on page 27. Sometimes you can see a single or regular quotation marks with guillemets when ] an acute accent used inappropriately for an your text is set to one of these languages in [ apostrophe, especially in e-mails or online. the Control panel or panel. It won’t , the sciences, and linguistics. change quotes already there, but it will con- Because prime symbols are in only a minor- Guillemets ( ’ ’, “ “ ) vert them as you type or copy/paste. ity of the , it’s acceptable to use Quotation marks straight quotes instead. are language-spe- Prime ( ′, ″, ‴ ) cific.T hey have a Very few people ( ° ) variety of forms in realize the The degree sym- different languages prime symbols bol serves, and in different are different among other media. The other from the things, to repre- primary shapes are straight quotes, and should not be confused sent degrees of the guillemets, with the apostrophe, quotation marks, or arc (e.g., in geometry and geographic coordi- which are used in languages like the acute accent or grave accent. Primes nate systems) or degrees of temperature. Its French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, designate several different units—including first recorded modern use in mathematics is among others. Because their shape reminds feet, arcminutes, minutes, seconds—and from 1569 where the usage clearly shows that us of arrows, these days many a web are also used for various other purposes in the is a small raised zero, to match the

INDESIGN MAGAZINE 41 April | May 2011 excerpt SUBSCRIBE NOW 4 symbols for minute, second, third; i.e. prime ′, complement of lowercase characters in /Pound/Hash ( # ) double prime ″, and triple prime ‴. superscript, almost all fonts include the ordi- In US English the In some languages the degree sign also nal º and ª in their character set. In Italian, number sign # is indicates the date of birth; for example, Yves Portuguese, and Spanish, they are appended frequently used Peters (°1969). (See also the .) However, to the numeral depending on whether the instead of the № don’t confuse the with the number’s is masculine sign. Usually ordinal º, which also looks like a raised circle. or feminine, respectively. They are some- called the in the United States, The difference is subtle yet important—the times underlined as well. the symbol is called the hash in most degree symbol is almost always a perfectly English-speaking countries outside North round circle, whereas the ordinal º is con- ( № ) America. To differentiate it from the sharp in structed like a lowercase ““. To type a degree Besides the ordi- musical notation, the two horizontal lines in character, press Option/Alt-8. nal º and ª, some the number sign must be truly horizontal, also whereas they’re slanted to the upper right in ( º, ª ) offer the numero the sharp sign. Ordinal numbers symbol—a com- Recently, the hash has acquired an indicate order, such bination of the capital with the masculine entirely new function thanks to the social as 1st and 2nd. In ordinal º, often underlined. This typographic networking and service some languages, of the word “number“ indicates . By adding a word or group of words ordinals are indi- ordinal numeration, especially in addresses, with no spacing preceded by a hash to a cated with a single names, and titles. If the font you’re using post, users can group posts together by character: o or a. doesn’t have this glyph, in English it’s topic or type; for instance, #InDesign. These Although few type- acceptable to substitute it with the abbrevia- are called hashtags. faces have a full tion “No.“ including the at the end.

INDESIGN MAGAZINE 41 April | May 2011 excerpt SUBSCRIBE NOW 5 ( • ) ( · ) , Pipe ( | ) Despite the Not many peo- Another symbol aggressive con- ple realize this, that can be used notations its but the use of as an alternative name may sug- spaces to sepa- divider mark in gest, the typo- rate words only general typogra- graphic bullet is completely harmless. All it originated somewhere between 600 and 800 phy is the vertical bar. The character has various does is indicate items in a list. The name most A.. In all the letters in a text applications in mathematics and programming. likely originated from its original shape that simply ran into each other, and it was up to It is not to be confused with the broken bar ( ¦ ), resembles an actual bullet. Bullets often the reader to distinguish the individual words. which, however, doesn’t have any clearly iden- appear in the dreaded MS PowerPoint pres- , the first punctuation marks, were tified uses distinct from the vertical bar. entations as bulleted items, also called “bullet regularly used in Latin to separate words. points“. Text editors and They can still be seen in architectural lettering ( * ) applications offer them in a wide variety of and inscriptions, where they sometimes Fans of classic shapes and colors. As the original round bul- assume the shape of a small triangle. Belgian comics let looks quite large and unwieldy in most Most use the interpunct to are more likely to fonts, designers often substitute another indicate the in words. Because its mispronounce symbol, such as a , an asterisk, or size and weight perfectly harmonizes with this “Asterix.“ The an interpunct. the stem weight of the and its punc- Greek/late Latin roots of its name are derived tuation, the interpunct is sometimes used by from its appearance: the asterisk resembles typographers as a general divider; for exam- the conventional representation of a star. Its ple, in dates, subheads, or logos, and to indi- design often differs in sans serif and serif cate list items. typefaces—commonly five-pointed in sans

INDESIGN MAGAZINE 41 April | May 2011 excerpt SUBSCRIBE NOW 6 serif designs, and six-pointed in serif Dagger, Double Dagger ( †, ‡ ) , ( ¶, § ) designs—yet this is no rule. The symbol origi- Those same fans of The unusual English nated in feudal times, when printers of family Asterix & Obelix will name for the para- trees used it to indicate the date of birth. It be delighted to find graph sign, “pil- was also used in liturgical music to denote a out that another crow“, may have its deliberate pause. name for the dagger roots in the French The contemporary applications for the is “obelisk“. Like the “pelagraphe“, a cor- asterisk are manifold. It often calls out a asterisk it was origi- ruption of the footnote, especially when only one or two nally applied for English ““. are on the page. can also replace musical notations in Its shape evolved letters—to avoid offending by obfuscating liturgical books of the Roman Catholic Church. from the capital with double —“C“ for swear words like f**k or avoid profanation of Fittingly, it now serves a function similar to the capitulum, “chapter“ in Latin. The pilcrow a holy name like G*d; or to preserve anonym- asterisk, namely to indicate a second footnote denotes in legal and academic ity, as in John S***. They can be an alternative when the asterisk has already been used. A writing. In desktop publishing software, it to typographical bullets to indicate items in third footnote employs the double dagger. marks the presence of an invisible carriage an unordered list. In textual media, enclosing When dealing with larger numbers of foot- return at the end of a paragraph. This last a word with asterisks *emphasizes* it. This is notes, simply use superscript numerals. application has caused the pilcrow to be useful when bold style is not available. Because its shape is reminiscent of a adopted as the universal icon in desktop Christian , in predominantly Christian publishing for hidden characters, such as regions the mark may also appear before or spaces, tab characters, end of line and page after the name of a deceased person, or the breaks, and so on. date of death. Therefore, it’s not used as a foot- Related to the pilcrow, the section sign Set in Mrs Eaves (top) and Tarzana Wide (bottom) note mark next to the name of a living person. mainly refers to a particular section, such as

INDESIGN MAGAZINE 41 April | May 2011 excerpt SUBSCRIBE NOW 7 legal code. The double S shape originated Generally speaking, there are two basic ( @ ) from the Latin “signum sectionis“. Both pil- forms: the roman , which is vir- The at sign is crow and section sign can also call out foot- tually identical to that of the Carolingian another logo- notes, after the asterisk, dagger, and double minuscule, and the italic ampersand, which gram. There are dagger. However, this usage is declining in is originally a later et-. The amper- several conflict- favor of numbered footnotes. sand has inspired many type designers, and ing theories quite a few typefaces, such as FF Thesis and about its origin and shape. It has acquired Ampersand ( & ) Poetica, include several ampersand varia- the most diverse informal names in a variety The term tions. Some of these shapes harken back of languages, from the Dutch “apenstaartje“ “ampersand“ to the original ligature and literally take on (monkey tail) and German “Klammeraffe“ derives from the the shape of an uppercase E connected to a (spider monkey), to the Italian “chiocciola“ phrase “and per lowercase t, like the original ampersand in (snail) and Russian “sobaka (собака)“ (dog), se and“. More Adrian Frutiger’s Univers. to the Chinese “little mouse“, and more. than a symbol, the ampersand is a logo- Nowadays it’s rare to see the amper- Until the latter part of the twentieth cen- gram: the smallest meaningful unit in a writ- sand in paragraphs of running text. tury, the at sign was an abbreviation for the ten language representing a word. You can Instead, it appears in formal names, spe- accounting and commercial invoice term “at trace the ampersand’s origin to the 1st cen- cifically of businesses and brands, and the rate of“. Then came the personal com- tury A.D. and the Old Roman cursive, in in titles of films, books, and games. The puter and a remarkable renaissance. The at which the letters in “et“—Latin for “and“— ampersand has also been widely adopted sign’s function in e-mail addresses and more occasionally were written together to form a in computing, , recently in Twitter has made this symbol one ligature. Over time, its form evolved a great and Web syntax. of the most ubiquitous non-alphanumeric deal, which explains why it takes on so many symbols in recent years. This success has varying shapes. its downsides too—it has been adopted in countless names of businesses wanting to Symbol, Registered ( € ), the pound sign ( £ ), the yen sign ( ¥ ), the sound modern and computer-savvy, and Trademark ( ™, ® ) rupee sign ( ₨ )—but there are many more, even spawned a typeface completely made The trademark sym- some now defunct. The generic currency sign up of versions of the at sign with all the differ- bol, raised T and , is useful when the symbol for a particular ent letters and numbers. provides notice that currency is unavailable. Even when used the preceding mark appropriately, it has an ambiguous meaning, Symbol, Sound is a trademark. The as the specific currency can only be deter- Recording Copyright ( ©, ℗ ) registered trade- mined by information outside the use of the Besides the mark, a capital ““ character itself. commercial at enclosed in a circle, The generic currency sign is a fairly recent sign, there are identifies a trade- symbol—it was first encoded for computers also a few legal mark or that has been registered in 1972. Although it was formerly included in symbols in with a national trademark office. Always place the Mac Roman character set, it has been typography. The , repre- both symbols after the trademark. replaced by the euro sign € since Mac OS 8.5, sented by a “C“ enclosed in a circle, identifies two years after the official currency of the works other than sound recordings that Generic Currency ( ¤ ) Eurozone was originally introduced in 1996. receive copyright protection. The sound One of the more recording copyright symbol is an enclosed obscure symbols capital “P“. You should position either before you may have the name of the copyright holder preceded come across is by the year of copyright. the generic cur- rency symbol ¤. We know the more common currencies—the dollar sign ( $ ), the euro sign

INDESIGN MAGAZINE 41 April | May 2011 excerpt SUBSCRIBE NOW 9 ( ‽ ) the head of an advertising agency, merged Should There Be a Reprise? The exclamation the two symbols into one mark that he There are many more punctuation marks to mark ( ! ) makes a believed would look better in advertisement explore—the various and sentence shout, and copy. Richard Isbell’s typeface Americana, alone could fill pages. If you’d like a follow-up the issued by American Type Founders in 1966, to this article, the magazine’s editor and ( ? ) makes it interro- was the first to offer the interrobang as let her know. gate. More than simply determining the one of its characters. From 1968 on the intention of the content and coloring its per- interrobang even appeared on Remington ■ ception, exclamation and question marks also typewriters. A little over six years ago, [typo]graphic designer Yves Peters tell us how the words should sound when The interrobang never quite caught on. started reviewing type in his Bald Condensed column on Typographer.org. Since August 2008 he edits The FontFeed, read aloud. Spanish even goes as far as to You’ll find it in a few typefaces, including a daily dispatch of recommended fonts, typography add an extra, inverted exclamation or ques- Christian Schwartz’s Amplitude and Fritz; techniques, and inspirational examples of digital type tion mark at the beginning of a sentence to Nick Shinn’s FF Fontesque Sans; the Linotype at work in the real world; and Unzipped, his blog on the FontShop BeNeLux home page. Yves also is an accomplished avoid any ambiguity. classics and Frutiger Linotype; and drummer with British/American/Belgian pop/rock bands When you combine an exclamation and Sans and Arial Unicode. Troubleman and Rosa Luxe*. His talent for being able to question mark, you have the interrobang. identify most typefaces on sight is utterly useless in daily life. When it ends a sentence, it expresses excite- ment or disbelief in the form of a question, or it signifies a rhetorical question. It’s been around since 1962, when Martin K. Speckter, Set in Amplitude

INDESIGN MAGAZINE 41 April | May 2011 excerpt SUBSCRIBE NOW 10 Help Your Friends If you enjoyed this excerpt from InDesign Magazine, take advan- tage of these great discounts: $20 off a one-year subscription (coupon code FRIEND), or $15 off a two-year subscription (coupon code FRIEND2). Go to www.indesignmag.com/purchase.php.

INDESIGN MAGAZINE 41 April | May 2011 11