I've recently decided, as a web designer and a typography enthusiast, that I must have proper characters on my web pages. Left and right quotation marks, em & en dashes... etc.
But, I found at least three ways to encode each of these things. For example: em dash can be made with... — — or —. For left double quote, I got: “ and “... I know some of these are ascii and some html. Dreamweaver seems to pick and choose what it thinks I should use at random... Which codes are optimal?
Submitted by The Monicker on Tue, 10/14/2008 - 08:16.
I've recently been to Philadelphia, where I saw documents printed in the late 1700's (handwritten too, for that matter), and I wanted more information about the alternate form of the letter "s". The one that looks like a long lowercase "f", sometimes with a cross bar extending to the left only, and sometimes without. I asked someone at the Ben Franklin museum/print shop, and he said that it was a form dating back to the Romans, but he didn't really have much information about it. I've done some research on my own and am not coming up with much. I'd like to know why the Romans used two forms of the letter, or if it was in fact another letter? And why was it discontinued? I assume it was in the standardization of spelling and/or to streamline the printing process? But if that's the case, why was it used for so long? And in what cases was it used and what cases was it not used? Were there rules for its use, or was it arbitrary?
Thanks!
Submitted by tgunnison on Tue, 10/14/2008 - 12:19.
Lazy designer tip: In the Character palette of most applications, you can switch kerning from "Metric' to 'Optical'. the result is usually better kerning and even some saved space. Can't count how many posters on the NYC subway could have benefited by this tiny step.
New Question: coding characters
I've recently decided, as a web designer and a typography enthusiast, that I must have proper characters on my web pages. Left and right quotation marks, em & en dashes... etc.
But, I found at least three ways to encode each of these things. For example: em dash can be made with... — — or —. For left double quote, I got: “ and “... I know some of these are ascii and some html. Dreamweaver seems to pick and choose what it thinks I should use at random... Which codes are optimal?
New question: typographic history
I've recently been to Philadelphia, where I saw documents printed in the late 1700's (handwritten too, for that matter), and I wanted more information about the alternate form of the letter "s". The one that looks like a long lowercase "f", sometimes with a cross bar extending to the left only, and sometimes without. I asked someone at the Ben Franklin museum/print shop, and he said that it was a form dating back to the Romans, but he didn't really have much information about it. I've done some research on my own and am not coming up with much. I'd like to know why the Romans used two forms of the letter, or if it was in fact another letter? And why was it discontinued? I assume it was in the standardization of spelling and/or to streamline the printing process? But if that's the case, why was it used for so long? And in what cases was it used and what cases was it not used? Were there rules for its use, or was it arbitrary?
Thanks!
Lazy designer tip: In the
Lazy designer tip: In the Character palette of most applications, you can switch kerning from "Metric' to 'Optical'. the result is usually better kerning and even some saved space. Can't count how many posters on the NYC subway could have benefited by this tiny step.
Thanks for the article, it
Thanks for the article, it explains in a very simple way the proportions of Kering.