Curly or straight?

[Edward C. Patterson]

Wait, why is 2 spaces after a period now a no-no? 

Two spaces after a period was a necessity when usuing a non-variable font, such a courieir, the standard typewriter face. However, in typesetting, it's only one space, and sometimes the second space hrows things off. So when using a variable wide typeface (like all type-faces), the two-spaces is inelegant, amateurish and a throwback to Mrs. Ginty McNutterbar's high school typing class. 

Edward C. Patterson
Queen of Mean Nominee

[telracs]

Two spaces after a period was a necessity when usuing a non-variable font, such a courieir, the standard typewriter face. However, in typesetting, it's only one space, and sometimes the second space hrows things off. So when using a variable wide typeface (like all type-faces), the two-spaces is inelegant, amateurish and a throwback to Mrs. Ginty McNutterbar's high school typing class. 

Edward C. Patterson
Queen of Mean Nominee

guess i'm an amateur.  our reports have to have 2 spaces after periods or they look weird.

[KateDanley]

Two spaces after a period was a necessity when usuing a non-variable font, such a courieir, the standard typewriter face. However, in typesetting, it's only one space, and sometimes the second space hrows things off. So when using a variable wide typeface (like all type-faces), the two-spaces is inelegant, amateurish and a throwback to Mrs. Ginty McNutterbar's high school typing class.  

Edward C. Patterson
Queen of Mean Nominee

Exceeeeept that the APA Sixth Edition has restored two-spaces after a period.

"Spacing (4.01). Regarding punctuation in manuscript drafts, APA suggests using two spaces after periods ending sentences to aid readability."

In addition, I work for a non-profit with older donors who learned "two spaces after a period".  All of our correspondence to the older donors is typeset with two spaces, because even if modern rules state "one space" is preferable, you appear uneducated to older folks.  I have rejected applicants whose cover letters were set with only one space.  It is okay to LOL-speak with the kids, but know your audience...  when in Rome...

Personally, one space hurts my eyes.  I need the extra room to breathe.  I believe in a world with two spaces after a period and Oxford commas for ALL!

[J Dean]

I'll never think of quotations the same way again.

[JimC1946]

I do nothing straight, but that's another subject  ).

Ed, that's soooo shameless.   

[Courtney Milan]

In html, there are no smart quotes, just up-and-down ones, like the ones you'll see here on this message board. " " "   

Yes there are.

”
“
’
‘

Those are the HTML entities associated with smart quotes.

Know them. Use them. Find-and-replace on them when making your e-books.

[ellenoc]

Curly except that for Smashwords I change them all to straight (and all my em dashes to hyphens and any accented letters to plain). Since I see other people's books now and then with strange symbols in place of some of these things, I don't trust the SW conversion software and make the document for them as plain as possible.

[CoraBuhlert]

I use curly quotes, because it looks more professional, and deal with the potential issues of hidden code in html.

[Edward C. Patterson]

Ed, that's soooo shameless.   

Well, Jim - I'm one of the original memebrs of Amazon's Shameless thread - so guility as charged. Wow, can you believe it's been just over 4 years since this all began?

And to throw anothe little pro/amateur tidbit in the pool, hypehns (-) do not replace em-dashes (—). And good form is a space before and aftre your em-dash. Although debatable, those space will keep you honoest when the Kindle justifes your text (which is another subject of convern).

Edward C. Shameless

[Jena H]

A)  My Word program defaults to the curly quotations.  Which can be a problem when typing dialogue in which one person's sentence is cut-off.  Example:  "Wait a minute, I didn't--"   Word will use a second "open" quotation at the end, unless there is a punctuation mark of some sort, such as a period, question mark, exclamation point.  So I sometimes have to trick Word into putting a close-quotation mark in that situation.

B)  I'm old-school.  I still use two spaces after a period.   (And one bottle of Yukon Jack during. Ooops, TMI.    )

[chumlyb]

I too thought this thread was about hair.  It weirded me out though since I just left my curlyorstraight.com (and .net, .org etc) URLs expire yesterday or the day before after realizing that I cared too little about hair styles to ever create a website about them - it was quite weird to see the term pop up here.

" ... just like the olden days of WordPerfect.  Hey, old people like me, remember that?  WordPerfect!"  I loved Wordperfect.  It was better by far than Word IMO.  I miss DOS too for that matter, and have sadly never had a database program since I last used dBase.

As a big fan of the two spaces at the end of a sentence I think this is great: " I have rejected applicants whose cover letters were set with only one space."  Gotta love standards!  I had read the criticism so had been eliminating the second space - but not happily.

Thanks for the HTML for curly quotes Courtney.  In fear of gobbly-gook in my book I had been using straight ones.  Time to add another step to the process!


 
  
 

[DreamWeaver]

I prefer curly quotes.

When creating a Kindle ebook, I start with MS Word, convert that to HTML, and then create the .mobi file that's submitted to KDP. I do a search for quote marks (single and double) and other characters/marks in the HTML file and replace all instances with the equivalent HTML entities:

left double quote = “
right double quote = ”
left single quote = ‘
right single quote = ’
em dash (—) = —
en dash (–) = –
© = ©
é = é
è = è
ñ = ñ

There is a comprehensive list of HTML special character codes here.

[LucyFrancis]

Courtney and DreamWeaver, bless you both for providing the codes. I wasn't looking forward to hunting those down.

[DreamWeaver]

" ... just like the olden days of WordPerfect.  Hey, old people like me, remember that?  WordPerfect!"  I loved Wordperfect.  It was better by far than Word IMO.  I miss DOS too for that matter, and have sadly never had a database program since I last used dBase.

I miss the olden days. I worked on dedicated word-processing equipment (such as Vydec) before personal computers were commonplace. I've used WordPerfect since it first came out (back in the golden days of DOS). I have a Windows version of WP on my computer, which I still prefer for some projects. I started using MS Word a few years ago—only because that seems to be the standard now. I really didn't want to convert to Word but I did adapt quickly. Both programs have their strengths and weaknesses.

I also used DOS versions of dBase (and FoxBase/FoxPro) many, many years ago when I was a database programmer. That was so much fun!

[Mike Dennis]

I have rejected applicants whose cover letters were set with only one space.

Wow, that's pretty anal retentive!

I do use the Oxford commas, though. They make much more sense. And I use straight quotes because of the hidden codes in the "smart quotes". Also, notice the period outside the quote marks when the quotation is not a complete sentence.