Quotes and Dashes for Typography Novices
Books are knowledge. Books are fun. Books are also on the decline. Over time, people opening a book might ask where the emojis are and why things look different overall. What about thinking ahead and bringing some of that book look into digital text?
Guides
⚠️ I’m familiar with English, Polish and Russian, so these are the locales covered here.
There are no rules, but there are guides — depending on the locale. To find which marks a language uses, look at a book typeset without a computer — one published before 1980 will do. There are other good reference points though.
Want a free, modern English guide? Practical Typography is the one. Writing for the UK? See The Oxford Style Guide. The original was published in 1893 (!) and there are about 40 (!) editions. US? Popular style guides come from publishers: The Chicago Manual of Style, The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage and The Associated Press Stylebook.
Polish has two main references. Zasady składania tekstów w języku polskim (PN-83 / P-55366) — Polska Norma from 1983. Zasady pisowni i interpunkcji is the modern one. There are books as well, but these are a good start.
Russian is simple: one book. A huge one, but it covers everything — Справочник издателя и автора.
Tools
On macOS nothing needs to be done. The symbols discussed in this article are built into Input Sources. To see the mappings, open System Settings → Keyboard → Text Input → Input Sources, select one and press Option , Shift or both.
On Linux, one option is Compose.
A lesser-known option is enabling typographic symbols. On KDE Plasma 6.7
open System Settings → Keyboard → Key Bindings.
Under Compatibility Options check Enable extra typographic symbols
and choose a key for the Key to choose the 3rd level. The result is macOS-like:
Alt
0
types → and Alt
.
types ».
The keyboard preview even shows the new symbols.
Believe it or not, I contributed
to these symbols in 2014!
On Windows, typing symbols is awkward. One needs to hold Alt while typing a four-digit code on the numpad (!) so it looks like Alt 0 1 5 1 . This is bananas. However, Windows 11 added alternatives like Win Shift - . There are also alternative layouts.
⚠️ This article does not cover automation tools (like SmartyPants and the Goldmark typographer).
Quotes
Put together, the guides give this cheat sheet of quote marks.
Note that the guides don’t use straight marks (' and ") so none of them are in the table.
| Name | Mark | macOS | Linux | Windows |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Left Single | ‘ | Option ] | Alt Shift K | Alt 0 1 4 5 |
| Right Single | ’ | Option Shift ] | Alt Shift L | Alt 0 1 4 6 |
| Low Single | ‚ | Option Shift 0 | Alt Shift J | Alt 0 1 3 0 |
| Left Double | “ | Option [ | Alt K | Alt 0 1 4 7 |
| Right Double | ” | Option Shift [ | Alt L | Alt 0 1 4 8 |
| Low Double | „ | Option Shift W | Alt J | Alt 0 1 3 2 |
| Left Double Angle | « | Option \ | Alt , | Alt 0 1 7 1 |
| Right Double Angle | » | Option Shift \ | Alt . | Alt 0 1 8 7 |
That’s intimidating. Fortunately, each locale uses two pairs: outer marks for regular quotes and inner marks for quotes within quotes. This is a special case, most of the time outer marks are used.
| Locale | Outer Marks | Inner Marks | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| English (UK) | Left Single Right Single | Left Double Right Double | ‘Lorem “ipsum” dolor’ |
| English (US) | Left Double Right Double | Left Single Right Single | “Lorem ‘ipsum’ dolor” |
| Polish | Low Double Right Double | Left Double Angle Right Double Angle | „Lorem «ipsum» dolor” |
| Russian | Left Double Angle Right Double Angle | Low Double Left Double | «Lorem „ipsum“ dolor» |
Dashes
Dashes are simpler. Note that the hyphen (-, left of = on most keyboards) joins words (like well-known)
and doesn’t separate parts of a sentence. Yes, it’s easier to type, but typographically it’s incorrect.
| Name | Mark | macOS | Linux | Windows |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Em Dash | — | Option Shift - | Alt - | Win Shift - |
| En Dash | – | Option - | Alt Shift - | Win - |
As with quotes, the locale defines the usage pattern.
| Locale | Mark | Example |
|---|---|---|
| English (UK) | En Dash | Lorem ipsum – dolor |
| English (US) | Em Dash | Lorem ipsum — dolor |
| Polish | En Dash | Lorem ipsum – dolor |
| Russian | Em Dash | Lorem ipsum — dolor |
⚠️ There is a difference in English (US) approaches to spaces around dashes. This article uses the variant from The Associated Press Stylebook (with spaces).
That’s It!
Pick a guide, be consistent, and the text will look like it came out of a book. It takes some getting used to but on macOS and Linux it’s fairly intuitive — apologies, Windows folks. And even if it’s too much, at least now it should be clear why books look the way they do.