"Type is to be read," she said.
“Type is to be read,” she said.
True quotation marks are curled, like small sixes and nines, and they open and close. Straight marks are a typewriter shortcut that does both jobs with one key.
It's a classic from the '90s.
It’s a classic from the ’90s.
An apostrophe is a closing single quotation mark, curled like a nine. That holds at the start of a word too, where it stands for letters left out.
1997-2026
It worked - mostly.
1997–2026
It worked—mostly.
The hyphen joins words. The en dash, a little longer, joins a range of numbers or dates. The em dash, longer again, sets off a break in a sentence.
And then...
And then…
Three dots that mark an omission or a thought trailing off. The ellipsis is a single character, which spaces the dots evenly and keeps them together on one line.
The office will find a flow.
The office will find a flow.
Letters that would collide, such as f and i or f and l, drawn together as one joined form. Most text typefaces include them and browsers use them unless told not to.
1/2 cup, 3/4 inch
1/2 cup, 3/4 inch
A true fraction is built from small figures, one raised and one lowered, on a sloping bar. Full-size figures and a slash are a stand-in.
8 x 10 in.
6' 2"
8 × 10 in.
6′ 2″
Dimensions take a multiplication sign, not the letter x. Feet and inches take primes, which are slanted strokes, not quotation marks.
The end. A new start.
The end. A new start.
One space follows a period. Two is a habit from the typewriter, and it opens holes in the even texture of a paragraph.
Good spacing is rarely noticed,
poor spacing is felt at once by every
reader.
Good spacing is rarely noticed,
poor spacing is felt at once
by every reader.
Lines cut off from their paragraph: a first line stranded at the foot of a column (an orphan), a last line stranded at the top of the next (a widow), or, as shown here, a single word left alone on the last line.
The space between words decides whether a paragraph invites reading or resists it at once.
The space between words decides whether a paragraph invites reading or resists it at once.
Justified type has straight edges on both sides, paid for with uneven word spaces. In a narrow column the gaps line up into rivers of white. Set flush left with a ragged right edge, the spacing stays even.