Monospacing considerations

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Mads Wildgaard
Mads Wildgaard Posts: 22
in Type Design Technique & Theory
Hi All

I was talking to a friend the other day, who proposed something as simple as placing the punctuation marks on the far left(or right, depending on following characters) of the general width. As in not centered.

Is this something which could be useful? Any examples of this approach?
Did some testing and see some advantages and disadvantages ofc.

Below is a quick reference
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Comments

  • Stephen Coles
    Stephen Coles Posts: 1,023
    edited April 2016
    To me, it isn’t balanced because it contradicts the relatively loose letterspacing in the rest of the font. If all the letters with a centered stem (l, t, i) are centered within their body, it follows for the punctuation to do that as well.
  • Johannes Neumeier
    Johannes Neumeier Posts: 393
    Maybe something you can get around with Opentype, but there also will be a lot of combinations like $12.99 or 7:23pm that will look odd if the punctuation isn't centered.
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,024
    edited April 2016
    What Stephen said. Plus, some punctuation varies in placement depending on the language. Look at the various quote marks, for example.

    Also, the exclamation mark looks off when there is so much space between the g and the !
  • Jacques Le Bailly
    Jacques Le Bailly Posts: 97
    Thomas Phinney said:
    Also, the exclamation mark looks off when there is so much space between the g and the !
    Unless you are French :)
  • Mads Wildgaard
    Mads Wildgaard Posts: 22
    Thanks for the replies!

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