What about all those "--" (dash-dashes)? Shouldn't they be
an "n" dash, or even an "m" dash?!! Doesn't type on the web
give you at least this option?

Typography is something that is often overlooked and almost never taught in a college's design programs these days...this is the biggest problem I see when reviewing portfolios. I myself have had to pick up things as i go along...can anyone recommend a good, solid book on typography?

I would like to know more about contemporary typesetting and its finer details. What's a reliable source for the finer details of typesetting for both English and French typesetting in particular, and any other rules that might change when setting in Italian, German and Spanish?? Is there a complete bible of typesetting as it should be done today? Maybe this remedial training (as in a course of reading) could make the subject of another article.

I understand the need for the double-dash in place of a true em dash because of incomptable browsers. But I believe the rule for an em dash is no spaces--just the em dash between the words.

There is an excellent article written by Peter K. Sheerin reviewing the rules for special characters and how to implement them on web pages at http://www.alistapart.com/stories/emen/

Keep up the good fight.
MW

I totally agree that the errors are being made everyday - though I believe that most of the errors don't come from people with Graphic Design training, but from office administrators and their helpers that are acting as typographers and designers. We are combatting a loosing battle to the desktop publishing world. They use MS Word and Publisher - not bad programs - but just not made to do the extiensive job that needs to be done for printing. I have lost many jobs for companies having their employees do the work on company time (or many times on their own time because they don't have time during the day to get it done) - then come back and say "can you fix it?"

Have railed against the prime mark used instead of Good Old Curly for some time (but now we see ads for monitors with inch marks that are really double quotes!!!!!)

The comma call is on the money, but why the quotation marks? Seeing there's no dialog present, nor discernable, attributable monolog, nor a cite from a previous, recorded utterance, the quote marks are superfluous; unless the billboard is anthropomorphic.

I absolutely cringed when the latest Campbell Soup commercials aired with the famous tag line "M' M' Good!" with straight quotes! This from national ad agencies and running for months.
Yikes. I've seen them in car commercials too.
35 years of typesetting and I'm still learning. One other problem I constantly encounter is the comma or period outside the quote mark, whether single or double.
And how about the inconsistent paragraph indents combined with spaces between paragraphs or at the beginning of the text.
Scot Gaznier

Thanks for a much-needed sermon! There's an excellent book on the subject of using type correctly, published by North Light Books. It's called Type Rules!, by Ilene Strizver. Available at howdesign.com.

It's getting bad ... even in print. You expect some lattitude on the web, I guess, but even Newspapers and print ads misuse the apostrophe.

On a different note, I really enjoy how you have set up text pages so the ads and other blurbs disappear when using the scroll bar, and reappear when moving the cursor back to the body of the page. It makes for much easier reading of text-heavy pages.
I wish you'd discuss THAT technique soon!

Thanks for all you do,
Steve Bohne

At creativepro,com we standardized on the double-hyphen to avoid many of the problems we've encountered with wonky special characters showing up. Pages with em-dashes that appeared fine on my Mac would display strange substitutions when viewed on my PC, so we settled for a rather inelegant compromise.

Nonetheless, thanks for noticing.
Pamela Pfiffner, editor in chief