Rules of DTP: Lesson 8: Typographical Punctuation

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Rules of DTP Lesson 8: Typographical Punctuation From Jacci Howard Bear, your Guide to Desktop Publishing Punctuate Like a Pro There's more to punctuation than just knowing where to place commas and how to properly use exclamation points. In desktop publishing, professional punctuation is all about keeping up appearances. It involves manipulating shapes, sizes, and spaces. Today's lesson covers three areas of punctuation most often neglected by non-designers and those new to desktop publishing. Use Proper Typographical Punctuation Curl your quotes, decode your dots and dashes. Proper punctuation marks give your documents professional polish. It's not a typo when you read ellipsis and ellipses in today's lesson. Ellipses with an e is the plural of ellipsis. And while we're discussing ellipses, the term ellipsis means the omission of words which don't necessarily hinder understanding of what was said. For example, Stop doing that. vs Stop that. In quotes, an ellipsis occurs where some part of the quote was left out. The term ellipsis also came to refer to the mark used to indicate the omission of words. Eclipsis is another (less common) name for that mark. Periods, or elliptical periods, are the usual form these days, but once it was common to use elliptical asterisks (***) and sometimes a 2-em or 3-em dash stands in for missing words. Pages in this Lesson 1: Typographical Punctuation 2: Quotes 3: Dashes 4: Ellipsis 5: Assignment Previous 2 Lessons in this Class Lesson 6: Line Length If this is your first email in the new format, see the sidebar in Lesson 6 and earlier lessons to move back further in the classes if you want to check out the illustrations and assignments. Lesson 7: All Caps This email is written by: Jacci Howard Bear Desktop Publishing Guide Email Me | My Blog | My Forum   Missing a lesson? Click here. About U. is our collection of free online courses designed to help you learn a new skill, solve a problem, get something done, or just learn more about your world. Sign up now, and we will email you lessons on a daily or weekly basis. You are receiving this email because you subscribed to the About.com 'Rules of DTP' email. If you wish to unsubscribe, please click here. About respects your privacy: Our Privacy Policy Contact Information: 249 West 17th Street New York, NY, 10011 © 2010 About.com   Advertisement