Re: [CSS3 Text] Thoughts on hanging-punctuation property

Hi yet again,

Here is a little text-book clarification about hung punctuation:

‘Small punctuation marks (commas, periods, hyphens, apostrophes, asterisk, 
and quotation marks) have less weight than full-size characters and, when 
set inside the measure, may create visual indents in the flush vertical 
alignment. For this reason, you may wish to consider setting small 
punctuation marks outside the measure in order not to disturb the vertical 
type alignment. When punctuation marks set outside the type measure, they 
are referred to as “hung” punctuation (1). 
 
‘Larger punctuation marks (colons, semicolons, question marks, and 
exclamation points), which have the same visual weight as full-size 
characters, are set within the the measure. The em-dash, because of it's 
length, is also set within the measure. […]’ 
― © James Craig, Designing with Type (Fifth Edition, 2006), page 90

This is what I have been trying to explain. Though I would add guillemets, 
[backward] slash, parentheses, and brackets to the small punctuation group; 
and horizontal bar, en-dash, currency symbols, etc. etc. to the large 
punctuation group.

Note that I have seen horizontal bars/em-dashes halfway hung. Like in on of 
my earlier examples from Adobe's website.
-- 
Daniel Aleksandersen

Received on Wednesday, 10 October 2007 22:44:14 UTC