3 ms·

As a technically lay person who does care about this, what are some tools that I can use to write web copy with typographically correct apostrophes and quotes (

As a technically lay person who does care about this, what are some tools that I can use to write web copy with typographically correct apostrophes and quotes (or convert it afterwards)? Am I supposed to use the html code or special key combination every time?

dchest 16y ago
If you're on the Mac: “ = Alt-[ ” = Alt-Shift-[ « = Alt-\ » = Alt-Shift-\ ‘ = Alt-] ’ = Alt-Shift-] — = Alt-- For other operating systems there are typographic layouts, such as http://ilyabirman.ru/english/typography-layout/ http://ilyabirman.ru/english/typography-layout/ There are libraries that can do the conversion, such as SmartyPants: http://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/ http://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/ In HTML, it's pretty easy to remember a few typographic characters that you'll need, see http://www.degraeve.com/reference/specialcharacters.php http://www.degraeve.com/reference/specialcharacters.php
- joebadmo 16y ago
  Thanks for those suggestions. So, then, do you (or others) actually use those key combinations instead of ' and " while writing/typing? That seems like a fairly heavy re-working of a very low level muscle-memory process that would take me a long time to habit-change. I don't use any of the software that Smartypants supports, but I just started playing with Pandoc http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ yesterday, and it has a --smart flag, so that's probably what I'll go with. As I also recently started trying to learn vim (it's hard), I might try this: http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2005/10/smart_quotes_and_more_in_vim_a.html http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2005/10/smart_quotes_and_... too. In case anyone else is in a similar position.
  - dchest 16y ago
    For my blogs, etc. I just process everything via Textile/SmartyPants/similar. For other writing, I don't bother to insert proper quote marks, but usually use a proper dash. BTW, Mac OS X since 10.6 can automatically replace quotes in any Cocoa textview, but I have it turned off. The problem with "smart typography" is that is must be language-aware: quotes used in «Russian» are different from “English” and „German“ and »other« »styles»: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English_usage_of_quotation_marks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English_usage_of_quotation_...
Samuel_Michon 16y ago
As a technically lay person who does care about this, what are some tools that I can use to write web copy with typographically correct apostrophes and quotes I use Textpattern CMS, which has built-in support for Textile (they were built by the same developer.) Textile converts marked-up text input to valid, well-formed XHTML and also inserts character entity references for apostrophes, opening and closing single and double quotation marks, ellipses and em dashes. http://textpattern.com/ http://textpattern.com/

dchest 16y ago

If you're on the Mac: “ = Alt-[ ” = Alt-Shift-[ « = Alt-\ » = Alt-Shift-\ ‘ = Alt-] ’ = Alt-Shift-] — = Alt-- For other operating systems there are typographic layouts, such as http://ilyabirman.ru/english/typography-layout/ http://ilyabirman.ru/english/typography-layout/ There are libraries that can do the conversion, such as SmartyPants: http://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/ http://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/ In HTML, it's pretty easy to remember a few typographic characters that you'll need, see http://www.degraeve.com/reference/specialcharacters.php http://www.degraeve.com/reference/specialcharacters.php

joebadmo 16y ago
Thanks for those suggestions. So, then, do you (or others) actually use those key combinations instead of ' and " while writing/typing? That seems like a fairly heavy re-working of a very low level muscle-memory process that would take me a long time to habit-change. I don't use any of the software that Smartypants supports, but I just started playing with Pandoc http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ yesterday, and it has a --smart flag, so that's probably what I'll go with. As I also recently started trying to learn vim (it's hard), I might try this: http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2005/10/smart_quotes_and_more_in_vim_a.html http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2005/10/smart_quotes_and_... too. In case anyone else is in a similar position.
- dchest 16y ago
  For my blogs, etc. I just process everything via Textile/SmartyPants/similar. For other writing, I don't bother to insert proper quote marks, but usually use a proper dash. BTW, Mac OS X since 10.6 can automatically replace quotes in any Cocoa textview, but I have it turned off. The problem with "smart typography" is that is must be language-aware: quotes used in «Russian» are different from “English” and „German“ and »other« »styles»: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English_usage_of_quotation_marks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English_usage_of_quotation_...

Samuel_Michon 16y ago

As a technically lay person who does care about this, what are some tools that I can use to write web copy with typographically correct apostrophes and quotes I use Textpattern CMS, which has built-in support for Textile (they were built by the same developer.) Textile converts marked-up text input to valid, well-formed XHTML and also inserts character entity references for apostrophes, opening and closing single and double quotation marks, ellipses and em dashes. http://textpattern.com/ http://textpattern.com/