Quote Tip of the Weekend

By -
The type geeks out there, know there is a difference between different quote marks, such as ", “ and ”. The latter two are proper typographically, the first is just what they invented for the type writer. Word and other programs will automatically use their “smart quote” feature to convert a boring quote into open or closed quotes. But what if the program your using isn't smart enough. On a Mac just his Option-[ for open double quotes, and Option-Shift-[ for close double quotes. Use Option-] and Option-Sift-] for single quotes. To do it in HTML use ‘ ’ “ and ” for ‘ ’ “ ” respectfully. On Windows, it is Alt+0145, Alt+0146, Alt+0147 and Alt+0148.

Thanks to P22's Tip of the Month, Mountain Dragon's HTML Entities Examples, Tip sheet on special characters Dave M. and Citizen Grim.

Comments

Anonymous said…
You can also use a content management system that automatically converts straight quotes to proper quotes: FireFly.

</plug>

:-b
19 September, 2007 11:26
CGrim said…
I usually use proper quotes with serif fonts, straight quotes with sans-serif (I will go out of my way to change proper to straight if using sans-serif).

The html is "&ldquo" and "&rdquo"

Wow, those are ugly ampersands.

The Windows shortcut is Alt+0145 and Alt+0146 respectively. This page has a good list of keyboard shortcuts in MacOS and Windows, as well as the corresponding HTML.

Sadly, it leaves the asterism (⁂), index finger (☞), lozenge (◊), therefore sign (∴), and my personal favorite, the interrobang (‽).
19 September, 2007 12:36
CGrim said…
Oops, I meant Alt+0147 and Alt+0148. The other is for single quotes.
19 September, 2007 12:39
Pete said…
Thanks for filling in the blanks Grim. Sorry, Blogger doesn't work quite as good as FireFly and ate my HTML equivalents even though I wrote them in Compose mode. Anyhow, I updated the tip with the rest of the story. It should also be noted that in HTML you can use the <q> tag to add smart quotes.

Thanks for introducing me to the interrobang, I look forward to introducing that into my typing along with my personal favorite, the long s (ſ)
19 September, 2007 13:46
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