From: "Ted White" <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Quote marks
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 20:32:14 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 7:54 PM
Subject: [WSFA] Quote marks

> There's been a discussion in rasff (the rec.arts.sf.fandom newsgroup)
> recently about quote marks.  On typewriters, and, in my experience, on
> computers, there's only one kind of double quote.  It's character 34
> in the ASCII code, it looks like this: " and it's used not just for
> quotations but also as an abbreviation for inches, and for seconds of
> arc.  It's also used in HTML tags, and in various computer languages.
>
> In books and magazines, on the other hand, there are two kinds of
> double quote marks -- an opening quote mark and a closing quote mark.
> They usually curve differently.
>
> The claim was recently made in rasff that fanzines that don't use
> separate opening and closing quote marks are "crudzines," not worth
> reading.
>
> This is not something I tend to notice, but apparently it's important
> to some people.
>
> So I did some research.
>
> The oldest book I have -- from 1860 -- uses separate opening and
> closing quote marks.  So does the newest book, printed this month.
> So do all but one of the many books I've checked, and all of the
> professionally printed magazines I checked.
>
> How about fanzines?
>
> Ansible does.  Mimosa did.  Das Fangold does not.
>
> How about the WSFA Journal?
>
> Sam Lubell's WSFA Journals did.  But none of the previous editors'
> WSFA Journals did.  The two issues I've published so far do not.

There are two entirely separate issues here:  the reproduction of quote
marks by computer, and the *printing* of quote marks.   These days, when
computer word-processing programs are used to create printed type, the
differences are moot.  But people have been using computers to create
fanzines for a relatively short period of time (and certainly those
generated in the dot-matrix era were uglier than any before or since).
Fanzines were *typed* on *typewriters* well into their 6th decade of
existence.   Typewriters do not have "curly" quote marks.  There is one
key, with the ASCII version, straight up and down.   To call fanzines
produced on typewriters "crudzines" is to reveal an incredible and fatuous
ignorance.   I would assume the person who made this remark is a fugghead.

When we look at books, we're speaking of typesetting -- either individual
type set by hand, or linotype cast in a bar.   *All* books published before
1960 were typeset.  The quotes would be whatever was available in the font
used.  Virtually all fonts had both opening and closing quotes.

But beginning in the '60s commercial typesetting began to change -- from
"hot type" to "cold type."   The latter does not use actual type, set or
cast.  "Cold type" was, originally, *optically* produced (although some
people used IBM's Composer, a sort of super-Selectric with variable spacing
and justification).   The earliest optical systems used a punched paper
tape created by typing on an adapted electric typewriter keyboard.   This
was fed into a machine which had its "type" on a filmstrip and alligned it
and photo-exposed it to create pages of type.   This evolved into modern
computer typesetting.

The reason for this change was purely economic:  typesetters earned premium
wages, but "cold type" used *typists* who could be paid minimal wages.
Many, to my certain knowledge, could neither speak nor read the English
they were rote-typing.

At this point, the quote marks changed, depending on the sophistication of
the systems and their users.  I began noticing ASCII-style quotes in
paperback books starting in the late '60s.  My local weekly paper, the
FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS, has ASCII-style quotes.   They have been
relatively common in commercial typesetting for at least three decades now.
I think they're ugly when I notice them.  But then, so are some other forms
of quote marks, such as two single quotes -- rather widely spaced --
instead of the true double-quote mark, which I find equally unpleasing to
the eye.

As my friend, typography expert John D. Berry, could tell you, commercial
typography has never been cheaper or uglier than it is today.

--Ted White