I’ve been observing a lot of informal typography a lot lately especially in social media services, namely Twitter. When I use these services I still try to write clearly (when possible) because essentially I’m still communicating. However, I also understand the limitations of 140 characters and quite forgiving and tolerant when I see other people’s tweets or status. There will always be people who don’t care how they write.

What I actually observe is the differences between people’s grammar, sentence structure and typography. Some still use the two hyphens (- -) to represent an em dash or a normal hyphen (-) seldom do I see a true em dash (—) which saves a character if you use the two hyphen method. Two schools of thoughts also precede the actual em dash, one is no spaces around it the other is a full space around the em dash i.e. the New York Times. The Chicago Manual of Style suggest no space which again saves two character spaces. In print I kern the em dash and on my blog I use a hair space but on Twitter no spaces so I’m all over the place. It’s also common to see a hyphens used for an author attribution rather than an em dash.

The en dash (–) is rarely used or seen (currently unavailable on the iPhone) most people just substitute the hyphen to signify duration e.g. 2000–2009. I actually won’t write something which requires the en dash if I can avoid it on the iPhone.

Two spaces after a period has always annoyed me. It’s what I call “term-paper typography” where two spaces after a period was required because some English professor didn’t realize it was initially done because typewriters of their era were horrible at letter-spacing.

I see misused quotes everywhere and it’s not isolated to just social media. Using correct quotes comes down to Typography 101. I see the foot and inch marks (',") being used incorrectly but are actually the default on the iPhone and most other mobile devices. Now that the iPhone supports actual smart quotes I wish Apple would change the auto-correction and promote better typography.

For me it’s about communicating as eloquently as possible and sometimes we makes sacrifices to engage our social audience using all caps or ubiquitous abbreviations i.e. OMG, WTF, ROTFL, etc. I try to employ good typography where it makes sense. Although it would seem in this age of constant contact “anything goes.”

“Writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent; if only that person will write down the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time.”
 — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.