I’m the first to admit that this is a super picky typography issue, but I’d be negligent if I didn’t point it out. I saw the following photo on the cover of the Business section of today Star and Tribune. Can you spot the typography error?

Can you spot the typography error?

If you said, “huh?” you wouldn’t be alone. Look at the apostrophe: see how it goes straight up and down instead of angling in toward the letters? That’s because it’s a prime symbol.

Still saying “huh”? Let me explain it this way: a prime symbol is the one that’s used to abbreviate foot. There’s a separate typographic symbol for an apostrophe, this one curves toward the previous letter. Here’s an example:

Correct usage of primes and quotations

In print, the correct symbol can be inserted using a glyphs palette or key command. Many design programs also have a feature called “Smart Quotes,” that converts the default prime and double prime symbols to apostrophes and quotes.

For the web, typographic manipulation is less accessible. That’s why this very blog entry is polluted with incorrect examples. Please excuse me.

So why should we care? Well, think of correct punctuation as proper grammar. Sure, you can speak poorly and still get your point across just fine, but you won’t sound very smart or refined. Same goes for typography. If you spend the time to make sure your typography is correct, your layout will feel more elegant and refined, though most people would be hard-pressed to tell you why.

Plus, in the case of Delta, they paid a good chunk of change to have this sign printed. And then a newspaper photographer came and took a photo of it. Wouldn’t they have desired to have the right message come from it?

Tags: apostrophe, correct punctuation, prime, typography

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 30th, 2010 at 9:03 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.