I noticed that in some modern signage the apostrophe is given a somewhat atypical form.
At first, I found especially the first sample jarring. What's your opinion?
Fathoming the issue, I noticed how rare is font support for the reversed quote /uni201B. I thought it was a rather commonly implemented, though rarely seen in use, character (since it is placed beside the regular quotes in the Unicode plane). Is that because it is considered obsolete/deprecated/discouraged?
Comments
In the second example, here again it seems to have been done for formal unity (notice the repetition of the same NW/SE angle throughout the design). This one is less successful and not very well drawn. The whole scheme here feels a bit naïve and the "backwards" apostrophe doesn't help. (See also Cutting Edge Logos.)
I can see how the apostrophe in the Assasin's Creed logo fits neatly beside the S, but the character itself looks like an entirely new construct, not part of the original typeface (the concave top). And it's a tad too light, methinks.
BTW does uni201B have a doubled version?
I once thought that a reversed apostrophe would fit neatly after a /t, because in some fonts a regular one creates too much white space.
But I had never heard that's how guillemets arose... And I don't think I believe it.
BTW, the flip side:
I’ve always loved them in old movie title and cartoon lettering.
I made them the default in a couple of typefaces (language-tagged to English in Boxley).
But cause problems in today's internationalised typographic world in which fonts need to support the conventions of multiple writing systems. Users in the European countries that use paired baseline (opening) and 'left' raised quotes (closing) really don't like this style.
That’s why I used a language tag.
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Here is an interesting German writing style, from Drei Märchen by Wilhelm Busch, late 19th century.
It should be an option, but in practice it isn't a robust mechanism. One of the things that's lacking in OpenType Layout is an unambiguous implementation specification — heck, any implementation specification — that governs how characters with the Unicode script property 'common' get handled in terms of shaping engine paths, whether or not they are rolled into glyph runs with adjacent text, what happens with embedded languages/script and punctuation, etc.. Without such a specification, it's impossible to know exactly how to implement language system-specific variation for punctuation in a way that will produce reliable and consistent output.
Even non-language system-specific lookups affecting common punctuation characters can be problematic. For example, I found that in order to get a Stylistic Set variant form of the Indian danda and double danda punctuation marks to work in InDesign, I had to put the lookup under the DFLT script tag, even though the context and adjacent characters were Bengali.
So, I attempted to work out a scheme to manage between mirrored and turned forms that would work appropriately in various language contexts. But because of the vast number of languages that use the different styles, it was impractical to try to address this through language tags and be confident of catching every possibility. As John says, in practice right now this still is not a completely robust mechanism.
In the end, I think we wound up taking a purely contextual approach. I’m pretty sure I chose to place it in {locl} — before any script/language declarations, so that it was included with all subsequent explicit declarations — rather than in {calt}, because {locl} is required and not turn-offable.
I can’t say this is the absolute best solution, but it seemed to work most reliably in our testing, and Cyrus was satisfied with this approach. We also included a Stylistic Set so that the turned quotes could be intentionally activated in all circumstances.
[Fun tip: In InDesign, if you have the “Use Typographer’s Quotes” preference turned on and you set the language attribute on a selection of text, it will apply what it thinks is the preferred quotation style for that language when you type “dumb” typewriter quotes.]
Of course, that isn’t the same as saying that a single typewriter quote should be used for prompting a secondary level quotation. Sorry if that was misleading (it was an old graphic I dug up).
John — I’d have to go back and look up exactly what I did, which I don’t have time for right now. But, as I recall, the basic logic was that if a quoteleft/quotedblleft is preceded by anything except some manner of space, then it can be assumed to be a closing mark, at which point the turned form is substituted. Maybe an oversimplification, but seemed satisfactory for a display face like that.