Robert Fisher
Just thinking out loud
Style
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When using a proportional font, you should use only one space between sentences. Well... In reality, it shouldn't matter. Whatever mechanism "typesets" the text should use the proper amount of space between words & sentences no matter how many space characters the user typed.
max-width: Text with about 30–60 characters per line is easiest to read.
line-height: Default tends to be 1.2, but 1.4–1.6 might be better for on-screen reading.
em dash: —
- A sudden break in thought: So, then I—what did you say?
- A parenthetical statement
- Instead of a colon or semicolon to link clauses
- To indicate an open range: Robert Fisher (1969—)
- A stand-in for the last two digits of a four digit year: 20—
- Before author citations
- As a bullet in lists
en dash: –
- Ranges: Bake for 8–10 minutes.
- Connection: The Mason–Dixon line
- In place of a hypen in compounds in which one part is already hyphenated
- In place of a hypen in compounds in which one part is two words: pre–World War II
- Sports scores or Supreme Court votes: 100–99; 5–4 (At least according to this CMS Q&A. Rationalized because we often use the word to when reading them.)
minus: −
- Negative numbers: It got down to −10° F today.
- Subtraction: 10−7=3
hyphen:
- To separate parts of a compound word: well-known
- To indicate prefixes & suffixes: pre-, post-, -s, -es
- To indicate that a word should be spoken letter-by-letter: k-n-o-w
- When a prefix ending in a vowel is added to a word beginning with a vowel: co-operate, pre-eminent (see also diaeresis below)
prime: ′ ″
- Feet & inches: He stood 5′11¾″.
swung dash: In Unicode 4. Most fonts don't have it. Used for brevity in dictionaries when repeating the head word. A tilde (~) can serve as a substitute.
long dash
- 2-em dash: missing letters is a word: Mr. F—— wishes to remain anonymous.
- 3-em dash: missing word or phrase: What the ———?
- To indicate that a vowel should not be considered to form a dipthong with the previous vowel
- daïs
- deëmphasize
- coöperate
- coördinate
- naïve
- noël
- preëminent
- preëmpt
- reënlist
- microörganism
- To indicate that a trailing E is not silent: Brotë
Sometimes an acute accent is used: Nestlé, Pokémon, saké, molé
grave accent
- To indicate in verse that -ed should be syllabic where it would regularly not be: blessèd
(I thought it was an acute accent, but I may be wrong.)
last updated 10 months ago #
