« DRM on audio books, a thing of the past? | Home | Technology and Today’s Students »
Grammar Issues: smart or dumb... quotes
Should quotes be curved or straight? Should we “quote” our text with nice quotes that by their direction indicate the start and finish? Or should we "quote" our text with straight quotes that simply mark the beginning and end of a quote, but themselves indicate nothing about whether they represent the start or finish?
The folks over at Apostrophe Atrophy feel fairly strongly that we should be using curved, or smart, quotes, and they blog photos showing examples of otherwise grammatically correct quotes that they deem problematic because they are straight quotes. They point out:
“The purpose of prime marks, or hatch marks, is to indicate inches and feet. Their use to mark quotations is a common blight across the typographic landscape.”Ellen Lupton in Thinking With Type, page 164
Opinions vary, but The Ministry of Type spend some time discussing the issue.
— michael | March 12, 2008 12:03 PM | Random bits
