[blindLaw] Typography

[Sai]

Correction: "smart quotes" ignores trailing punctuation when
determining if there's a following space. E.g. it works at the end of
sentence if you have a period after the quote.

You can turn smart quotes off in the word processor and/or system-wide
keyboard settings options.

Using straight quotes instead of directional (smart) quotes will never
be wrong, it just won't look as good. Using the wrong directional
quote is a noticeable error, though.

So, if you want to avoid errors at the cost of looking a bit less
nice, just use straight quotes for everything and turn off smart
quotes.

Sincerely,
Sai
President, Fiat Fiendum, Inc.

On Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 2:31 PM Sai <sai at fiatfiendum.org> wrote:
>
> On the discrimination thread, a few issues related to typography came up.
>
> 1. Smart quotes are in Braille.
>
> opening & closing single quote = ‘ & ’ =  ⠠⠦ & ⠠⠴ (that should be dot 6, not dot 3)
> opening & closing double quote = “ & ” = ⠦ & ⠴
>
> Often straight single (') & double (") quotes are used instead, eg because it's easier to type and to find & replace.
>
> "Smart quotes" means that the software replaces the straight quotes I just used with “opening & closing quotes like this”, just based on spacing. Space before = “opening; space after = closing”; no space either side = straight"quotes.
>
> Straight single quote is identical to both apostrophe (for contractions like that's) and the hours symbol (as in both time and degrees of angle); double quotes is identical to both the vertical ditto symbol (in English) and minutes (again both time & angle).
>
>
>
> 2. I suggest reading Matthew Butterick's book "Typography for Lawyers", excerpted here:
>
> https://typographyforlawyers.com/toc.html
>
> The book itself is only available in softbound copy:
>
> https://store.legal.thomsonreuters.com/law-products/Practice-Materials/Typography-for-Lawyers-2d/p/105523076
>
> Perhaps some of you might contact the author & publisher to get them to make a blind accessible version available.
>
> Their emails are, respectively (in ready to paste format):
>
> "Matthew Butterick" <mb at typographyforlawyers.com>, "Thomson Reuters West accessibility" <westaccessibility at thomsonreuters.com>
>
> If you have success, please let me know.
>
>
> 3. I'm a rare combination: fully sighted sometimes, fully blind other times, experienced at writing & editing legal briefs, plus some background in UX design.
>
> So, if you have questions about this kind of topic that your own research doesn't answer, feel free to ask me.
>
> I mostly use computers fully sighted at home (eg writing briefs), except for navigation or in normal lighting (eg taking notes in an office or school setting), so I'm not as well versed in eg NVDA. But I might be able to explain things at the intersection of sighted & blind.
>
> Sincerely,
> Sai
> President, Fiat Fiendum, Inc., a 501(c)(3)
>
> PS Non-gendered pronouns please. NSA et al: I'm a US citizen.
>
> Sent from my mobile phone; please excuse the concision and autocorrect errors.