Typographers Quotes

Typographer s Quotes

No self-respecting typographer would be caught dead using straight or dumb quotation marks instead of paired typographers' ("curly") quotes. By default this preference is on. Typographer's quotes are also an option in your Text Import Options when you Place text. In American English, commas and periods go inside the quotation marks even if the punctuation is not part of the quoted sentence. Colons and semicolons are the exception: They go outside the quotation marks. In British English, all punctuation goes outside the quotation marks.

Figure 6.1. Typographer's Quotes Preferences.

Figure 6.2. Word Import Options.

There may be times when you actually want straight quotes (feet or inch marks). Rather than having to go back and forth to the Preferences dialog box, you can also toggle this option by pressing Command+Option+Shift+' (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+'). Better yet, avoid these straight quotes altogether and use the prime (feet, minutes) and double prime (inches, seconds) characters. These characters can be found in OpenType fonts (See Chapter 7: "OpenType") or in the Symbol font. Unfortunately they do not have an assigned keystroke, but can be accessed using the Glyphs palette.

A third preference relating to the appearance of your quote marks is in your Dictionary preferences. You can choose the appearance of your single and double quotes for specific languages.

	French single quotes
<>	French double quotes
<>	Non-French double angle quotes without space
,O'	German single quotes
,,O"	German double quotes

Figure 6.3. Straight quotes vs. prime marks. Typographer's quotes used incorrectly (example A). Straight quotes (example B). Prime marks (example C).

Figure 6.4. Quote Preferences.