Non-Designer’s Type Book, The, Second Edition

Chapter 6. Punctuation Style

All of us now circumvent the professional typesetter and create beautiful publications on our own desktops. We’ve heard all about the typesetting standards of setting one space after periods, and how to access em dashes and en dashes and true quotation marks and apostrophes. Although most of us know how to create these alternate characters, there still seems to be considerable confusion over when to use them. The punctuation in your publication affects the professional appearance of your work just as powerfully as the characters themselves. (It’s interesting that when the “rules” of design are broken it is called “creative,” but when the established rules of punctuation are broken it is called “uneducated.” Creative ...