Punctuation Aesthetics

Latent Print presents Styleguide Wednesday, a post each Wednesday featuring an editorial convention from the world of styleguides. View previous Latent Print moments of stylebook study and reflection here. This week features fonts and punctuation.

Chicago’s lead entry in its section on the treatment of punctuation aesthetics, verse 6.3, warns of a “departure from Chicago’s former usage.” It’s a hint that some editors or clients might prefer what the stylebook calls a “more traditional system.”

Chicago presents the traditional system as an alternative system, verse 6.5. The alternative system asks us to give punctuation, with exceptions for question marks and exclamation marks, the same font as the previous word. The calendar that I formerly edited here tends toward that alternative system.

The convention for boldface, for example (look, bold comma follows): The Earshot Jazz Festival, now in its 20th year, features local, national, and international musicians in various Seattle venues October 17–November 2.

The Gregg states the convention for italics: “When you use italics to give special emphasis to words or phrases in a series, it is customary—for reasons of appearance—to italicize any accompanying marks of punctuation” (¶290b).

Chicago’s departure is evidently slow to catch on. Amy Einsohn tucks it in a note in her The Copyeditor’s Handbook: “A newer convention calls for all punctuation to be set in the style of the running text” (p. 316n). Her treatment of the convention, p. 114, tends to that older system, as we might also expect from our editors and clients.

Latent Print departs, per Chicago, for that newer convention. This means that the Earshot comma above doesn’t share the bold of the previous word. It also means punctuation won’t carry italics or hyperlinks.

The newer and older conventions require the copy editor or proofreader to scan changes of font—don’t forget hyperlinks—to ensure that punctuation is consistent with house preference.