As I continue my schooling, I become more and more of a snob about design. Now that I’m reading the most pretentious book about typography ever written on my own accord, my snobbery is escalating to new heights. So far, I’ve been very good at quelling my urge to say things such as, “Those two typefaces don’t go together because the x-height of your body type is much too proportionally large compared to your headline type, and your body type is influenced by early 20th century French design, so I can’t see how that type is applicable to your subject matter, plus your leading is far too tight, and just because there’s white space there doesn’t mean you have to fill it.” (Deep breath.) “Furthermore...” I can get away with that in class where I pride myself with being the teacher’s pet, but at my job where I don’t have a position in the art department or to my friends who believe because they own computers they are immediately graphic designers, I bite my tongue unless I’m invited to offer criticism.

However, I do have one typographic pet peeve that I consider unforgiveable, and I will lash out violently if I haven’t had my morning coffee yet. I see it in the work of plenty of modern designs. Typography books and classes drill it into your head. Microsoft Word, Quark, InDesign, and PageMaker all make the change for you. And editors, who are hired for their mastery of the language, should know better. Yet, it’s still a scourge.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are quotation marks:

...and these are not:

The latter are called primes and are used for units of measurement, like feet and inches, or minutes and seconds when measuring angles. The curvature of typographic quotes (or smart quotes) encompasses the quoted material much like (parenthesis) and [brackets] do.

One can also compare proper quotation marks to the Spanish custom of sentence punctuation, like when a child cannot have an extra churro after dinner and he asks, “¿Por qué no?”

Of course, smart quotes don’t exist on the keyboard. And on the web, we are only stuck with "dumb" quotes unless we want to insert painstakingly all of the character codes, which I’ve done in this entry (phew). Even then, the character codes may not work for many older browsers, and with the small point size of the text and the low-resolution of monitors, you can hardly tell the difference anyway. The limitations of technology are not my beef. My beef is with lazy graphic designers.

Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop do not automatically change quotes to the proper typographical versions, though recent versions of Illustrator do have a function that searches and replaces quotes in the document. Use it. Better yet, designers already have to learn so many keyboard combinations already, so you might as well learn a few more:

	Mac	Windows*
‘	Option+]	Alt+0145
’	Shift+Option+]	Alt+0146
“	Option+[	Alt+0147
”	Shift+Option+[	Alt+0148
*Type numbers on numeric keypad!

Details are what separate the women from the girls in design. Overlooking this particular detail is a clear indication that you have no earthly idea what you’re doing. Show me a good design with detail paid to typography, and I'm sure to exclaim, “¡Su diseño es rico suave!”

(By the way, the same goes for apostrophes. And remember that you read it on Arlo’s blog.)