Smart Quotes
Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2011 2:48 pm
Hello,
usually, in “good” typography, more sophisticated punctuation marks than the standard ", ', - etc. are used:
“These are the correct quotation marks for English, and that’s a correct apostroph”
„These are German style quotes“ or »these«.
«These are French style quotes»
In Openoffice, MS Word etc., the ordinary, typewriter symbols are usually automatically converted to correct, typographically appealing punctuation marks. Normal Keyboards lack these symbols, but that is rather because of the ignorance of Microsoft, Apple, the keyboard makers etc. In modern, Unicode days, there is absolutely no reason not to support these quotation marks. " is typewriter and ascii age.
So I wonder, if you could maybe support either smart quotes, where e.g. " or ' are automatically converted to “, ”, ‘ or ’ (and analogous in other languages), or just add these correct punctuation marks on the keyboard, for manual insertion? I guess, smart quotes would be easier, but sometimes a nuisance, although I cannot really think of any case, where you wouldn’t need them (I guess nobody writes program code with a cellphone, and I guess few people insert these in their passwords – but for passwords, smart quotes could be disabled). In almost any ordinary text, typographic correct quotation marks are better than their simple variants.
I guess this is really worth it. Computers have made so much progress, but computer typography sometimes is still the same as 40 years ago.
usually, in “good” typography, more sophisticated punctuation marks than the standard ", ', - etc. are used:
“These are the correct quotation marks for English, and that’s a correct apostroph”
„These are German style quotes“ or »these«.
«These are French style quotes»
In Openoffice, MS Word etc., the ordinary, typewriter symbols are usually automatically converted to correct, typographically appealing punctuation marks. Normal Keyboards lack these symbols, but that is rather because of the ignorance of Microsoft, Apple, the keyboard makers etc. In modern, Unicode days, there is absolutely no reason not to support these quotation marks. " is typewriter and ascii age.
So I wonder, if you could maybe support either smart quotes, where e.g. " or ' are automatically converted to “, ”, ‘ or ’ (and analogous in other languages), or just add these correct punctuation marks on the keyboard, for manual insertion? I guess, smart quotes would be easier, but sometimes a nuisance, although I cannot really think of any case, where you wouldn’t need them (I guess nobody writes program code with a cellphone, and I guess few people insert these in their passwords – but for passwords, smart quotes could be disabled). In almost any ordinary text, typographic correct quotation marks are better than their simple variants.
I guess this is really worth it. Computers have made so much progress, but computer typography sometimes is still the same as 40 years ago.