I will go through things I've written and replace dashes - like these two - with proper long em dashes, which look a lot better to me. Back in the day, I'd always double the hyphens--like this--and then at a specific moment in my life I switched to space, hyphen, space. But ultimately it all looks wrong to me unless it's an em dash.
I've put down ebooks before (permanently) after noticing a typo and a poorly placed comma or two. It feels like I can't trust the text anymore. (My reading of I, Robot was sunk by sloppy text. One day...)
While I am evidently picky about punctuation, I still have trouble understanding people who get upset about seeing straight quotation marks and apostrophes instead of the curled, slanted ones. That seems like a very high-maintenance preoccupation for very little return. There is no easy way to type oriented quotes and apostrophes. And if you aren't looking, and you are most people, you aren't going to see the difference. I'd really prefer not to see the difference; I wouldn't consider it an improvement if the difference started jumping out at me.
It's already bad enough that when I copy and paste, momentarily paying closer attention to atomic symbols, I often replace any curly quotes with the straight, lower-maintenance, "less correct" ones. Consistency does matter.
See, I'm as bad as people who bitch about the uncurled ones being wrong :p
But I do recognize it's a useless preoccupation (I'm being mean) unless you're typesetting for publication. For my aims, I entirely refuse to go hunting the snark of quotation marks everywhere to curl them so they'll look marginally more proper—unless someone is set on doing that for me—in which case I won't stop them, as long as it's consistent. Entirely refuse, I say!
The curled ones look a little nicer, I admit. But I also don't want to notice. Magic happens when you stop noticing font and every other surface.
The curled ones look a little nicer, I admit. But I also don't want to notice. Magic happens when you stop noticing font and every other surface.
As long as both quotation marks are included, nobody spends time wondering whether a particular mark is the start or end of a quotation. I see the potential use, but in practice it's almost never needed. Even where it could help slightly, the amount it helps is negligible. (For some readers, say with dyslexia, this may be different, though. I'm not sure, but I apologize for being inconsiderate.)
The joke's on me, of course, for spending the time and energy to actually put these thoughts in print.
