Tabular punctuation - to add or not to add?

Eimantas Paškonis
Eimantas Paškonis Posts: 91
in Type Design Technique & Theory
If values are aligned by right and have same decimal value, there's no need to tabular period, comma or currency sign. But that's not always the case. Is there a need for tabular punctuation and if yes - which ones?
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Comments

  • Eimantas Paškonis
    Eimantas Paškonis Posts: 91
    Why would you use tnum outside of the table?
  • Igor Petrovic
    Igor Petrovic Posts: 338
    I am bumping this thread with the same question.

    Seemingly tabular punctuation (mainly period, comma, colon, semi-colon, space) is rarely found in fonts, and they surely look oddly "empty" in text.

    Do people rely on the assumption that tabular entries will have these characters in the same position vertically?

  • donat raetzo
    donat raetzo Posts: 69
    Igor Petrovic said:
    I am bumping this thread with the same question.

    Seemingly tabular punctuation (mainly period, comma, colon, semi-colon, space) is rarely found in fonts, and they surely look oddly "empty" in text.

    Do people rely on the assumption that tabular entries will have these characters in the same position vertically?

    I do prefer punctuation in tables in the same position vertically, yes. My tabular figures are NOT kerned with anything (and are designed on equal widths). The punctuations are on equal widths, too. Further I include a figure space and a punctuation space. To round up I also include an en-dash (on figure width) and an em-dash (on 2x figure width), for prefered vertical alignment in tables. 

  • Igor Petrovic
    Igor Petrovic Posts: 338
    @donat raetzo Thanks for the answer, tabular versions of en and em dashes sound reasonable (and easy to implement).

    But when it comes to period, comma, space, colon, and semi-colon, I actually wanted to ask does anyone puts them on the same advance width as figures.

    For example that both zero.tf and period.tf have advance width of 650 units. So to keep vertical columns in a table strictly even when the entries have different decimal structure. (like monospaced fonts do).

     

  • Andreas Stötzner
    Andreas Stötzner Posts: 828
    Igor Petrovic said:
    … when it comes to period, comma, space, colon, and semi-colon, I actually wanted to ask does anyone puts them on the same advance width as figures.


    No, never. Why would I do this? It looks like a bold mistake and I cannot imagine any functional reason why a period or comma needs the same width as the figures.

  • Igor Petrovic
    Igor Petrovic Posts: 338
    edited December 12
    It looks like a bold mistake and I cannot imagine any functional reason why a period or comma needs the same width as the figures.
    I agree, it looks very odd.

    But then again, I felt that the purpose of tabular figures could be easily compromised if rows have a different decimal structure.

    Actually, I am not sure how often that happens. Seems that happens often, but that type-setting software handles it with tabs centered around punctuation.

    Anyway, I got two useful answers. Thank you all! 
  • Paul Hanslow
    Paul Hanslow Posts: 191
    One solution not mentioned (after only skimming the thread) is putting the period, comma, semicolon and colon on the same advanced width. That way, the figures will align in each row when set like this:
    10,203
    10.293
    10,200

    This is also handy considering some European languages swap the dot and the comma as their meaning flips (i.e. $23,00.34 for Western World versus $23.00,34 for some Euro languages). 
  • Mirco Schiavone
    Mirco Schiavone Posts: 5
    edited December 16
    I think an equal width (but different from the tabular width) for period, comma, colon and semicolon is completely sufficient. Also from a typographic view I would align the decimal position across rows so all periods would be above each other.

    If designers are really after having punctuation etc. have the same width as the tabular figures,  they would most likely use a monospace anyway.

    In my opinion a typeface should not be able to solve any use case possible but a reasonable amount.

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