re: Typographic sins

Ah yes, as an editor, I often run into the ole em dash/en dash/hyphen issue at work. People here have actually argued with me about what looks better and what is correct. So I printed this out and will give it to the offending party. It's funny to think about, but clean, clear typography, as with most other elements of publications design, is meant to make the design invisible--to eliminate distraction so that the reader can get the information they need from the piece without thinking about whether or not an apostrophe should be there. To answer Elizabeth's question, yes, the apostrophe should only be used in possessives or contractions, but can be used to avoid confusion with lowercase letters or abbreviations with one or more interior periods (I had to re-look this up in Chicago just to make sure.) In the case of the Orioles hat, I think it is necessary to even out the design and limit confusion. However, in many cases extra apostrophes or quotation marks where not needed can make a business look unprofessional. I was surprised the other night when I sat down at a nice restaurant in Seattle with my mom and the menu read "entree's."

One rule that is interesting to me is that you do not indent the first paragraph, but only subsequent paragraphs. I did this on a cover letter that I sent to my dad to read and he found it distracting because he thought it was a mistake. So my attempt at good typographic method was in the end having the opposite effect. I think this is when you have to make decisions as a designer about what rules you follow and which ones you break to get the desired effect--all the sins on the list are annoying, but if they are broken by the right person making the right decision, they may not be sins at all.