Dashes and quote marks

• 

  ldmartin1959 · Member · Oct 31, 2011 at 12:10 am

  • Copy link
  • Add topic to favorites

  I have noticed that usually the opening quote mark gets screwed up if it is not immediately preceded by a space. In other words:

  non- "big names"

  renders as:

  non- ”big names”

  You notice that the “opening” quote mark is incorrectly rendered as a closing quote mark. The solution is to span the space thusly:

  <span style="margin-left:-.35em;"> </span>

  When I am coding this is a CSS file, I call the class “.reverse” (appropriately enough). This little trick can actually be used to accomplish to things:

  First, as in the sample above (you can see this live at < http://recommend1959.wordpress.com/2011/10/30/howard-smith-totally-committed/ >, paragraph 5) this allows you to insert a space for the purposes of coding while hiding it visually to the reader. This can be used to allow for a line wrap in a long text string which would not otherwise wrap and might extend beyond the bounds of a container.

  Second, it can be used to prevent a line wrap by replacing the standard space with a non-breaking space. This will allow you to prevent a line wrap a hyphenated word that might otherwise wrap.

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

• 

  ldmartin1959 · Member · Oct 31, 2011 at 12:19 am

  • Copy link

  Whoops. The line:

  “When I am coding this is a CSS file…”

  should read:

  “When I am coding this in a CSS file…”

  Sorry about that.

• 

  ldmartin1959 · Member · Oct 31, 2011 at 2:46 pm

  • Copy link

  Another typo. The code:

  non- "big names"

  should read:

  non-"big names"

  Sorry about the ‘cut and paste’ error.