I put angled quotesingle and quotedbl in a proprietary typeface, making sure the client approved that, but have followed convention otherwise.
However, perhaps I should make all my “stupid” quote marks angled in future—after all, that is what my Mac keyboard is indicating.
What do you think?
Comments
Regarding angled forms for “stupid” quotes: I mentioned liking it in Quadraat Sans Mono in the other thread, but for a text typeface I would stick to the convention of leaving them vertical. If a client requests it or agrees to it, then I see no problem breaking convention. Especially display typefaces look dull when using vertical lines (as the first line in your illustration above).
Alt+[ = “
Alt+Shift+[ =”
Alt+]=‘
ALF+Shift+]=’
I really wish the layout were the much more mnemonic
Alt+[ = ‘
Alt+]=’
Alt+Shift+[ =“
ALF+Shift+]=”
I still instinctively hit the keys as if [ and ] represented opening and closing quotes rather than double- vs single-quotes.
Funny that it takes a Windows user to get the Mac quote shortcuts right ;)
No doubt because I still foolishly expect a mnemonic significance!
(I wouldn’t advise it for the other keys, things would get awfully busy.)
The German quotes in Fraktur are of shape low-9 (begin) and high-6 (end).
For proofreading I compile an on-screen char-picker with the used or needed special characters, e.g. for newspapers 1850-1910:
option-1 = «
option-shift-1 = »
option-2 = “
option-shift-2 = ”
option-3 = ‘
option-shift-3 = ’
' = '
shift+2 = "
I always loved that, but then Apple became too fashionable for mere mortals. :-)
This is what bugs me. I tried to design <quotesingle> to match the style of the typeface, but it still looks so wrong. And this is the typical North American usage of <quotesingle>, not as a quote mark. But the market is international, so I did not make this character look like a proper apostrophe. Angled monolinear <quotesingle> would still offend my sensibilities. Ideally, I would like to be able to use <locl> for a specific North American variant of <quotesingle>, that looks like a comma.