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jonathaneunice | 2 months ago

Cosigned!

Em dash forever! Along with en dash for numerical ranges, true ellipsis not that three-period crap, true typographic quotes, and all the trimmings! Good typography whenever and wherever possible!

discuss

order

infogulch|2 months ago

I agree we all ought to use available punctuation marks correctly. That said, I am compelled to lodge a formal complaint against quoted text arbitrarily assimilating punctuation from its surrounding context.

Quoted text is a sacred verbatim reproduction of its original source. Good authors are very careful to insert [brackets] around words inserted to clarify or add context, and they never miss an oppurtunity (sic) to preserve the source's spelling or grammatical mistakes. And yet quoted text can just suck in a period, comma, or question mark from its quoted context, simply handing the quoting author the key to completely overturn the meaning of a sentence?! Nonsense! Whatever is between the quotes had better be an exact reproduction, save aforementioned exceptions and their explicit annotations. And dash that pathetic “bUt mUH aEstHeTIcS!” argument on the rocks!

“But it's ugly!”, says you.

“Your shallow subjective opinion of the visual appearance of so-called ugly punctuation sequences is irrelevant in the face of the immense opportunity for misbehavior this piffling preference provides perfidious publications.”, says I.

andersa|2 months ago

I completely agree, this is perhaps the least sensible part of common English syntax.

   "Hello," he said.  
   "Hello", he said.
Only one of these makes actual sense as a hierarchical grammar, and it's not the commonly accepted one! If enough of us do it correctly perhaps we can change it.

ademarre|2 months ago

I am all for using proper typographic symbols, but it is unclear what place the precomposed ellipsis U+2026—what I assume you mean by “true ellipsis”—has in that canon, especially with the compressed form it takes in most fonts.

pwdisswordfishy|2 months ago

En dash for ranges is too easily confused for a minus sign. I would rather use a different symbol altogether.

jcheng|2 months ago

And text figures! And proper small caps!!

wdporter|2 months ago

Agreed. Good typography is good writing.