Make mine curly…

Quotation marks: they’re used to enclose direct speech and quotations. In most programs, the keyboard will give you double primes, which are used to mark inches. Graphic design programs default to typographic or “curly” quotes. In Britain they are called inverted commas.

According to the Oxford Companion to the English Language, “Double marks are traditionally associated with American printing practice and single marks with British practice”

In the Renaissance, quotes were marked by italics, but typographers first cut quotation marks in the mid-16th century, and by the early 17th century quotation marks were common.

The French and Italian custom prefers guillemets. Quotes are opened with left-facing double guillemets, and closed with right-facing double guillemets (e.g. «I prefer primes,» said the typewriter repairman).

As with the apostrophe, many English speakers (especially sign painters) are befuddled by the the rules which govern the use of quotation marks.

Just remember, quotes are used for direct attribution, not for emphasis.

An oblique stroke of genius…

The “slash” that we all have on our keyboards, is known as the virgule. The name comes down to us from Latin through French. It served medieval European literature as a comma and still performs this function in English language poetry. We also use it as a separation of like things (2005/2006), and it stands in for or (as in and/or).

The solidus is ever-so-slightly more oblique. It is the typographer’s fraction bar. Solidus was the name of a Roman coin. A Roman pound (libra) was comprised of 72 solidi. The British pound mark, £, is an ancestor of the Roman libra. The English shilling descends from the Roman solidus. The mark which separates British pounds, shillings and pence also came to be called the solidus (£ ⁄ s ⁄ d), and it is also a typographic character which is used to improvise fractions.