Hanging punctuation
Encyclopedia
Hanging punctuation or exdentation is a way of typesetting
punctuation marks and bullet points, most commonly quotation mark
s and hyphen
s, so that they do not disrupt the ‘flow’ of a body of text or ‘break’ the margin
of alignment
. It is so called because the punctuation appears to ‘hang’ in the margin of the text, and is not incorporated into the block or column of text. It is commonly used when text is fully justified
.
The style was used by Gutenberg in the Gutenberg Bible
, the first book printed in Europe.
Very few desktop publishing
applications allow for automatic hanging punctuation. This often requires manual intervention by the designer or typographer, or the use of drawing software which supports this feature, or the use of sophisticated typesetting tools. PdfTeX
, a variant of the TeX
typesetting program, has microtypographic capabilities that allow for semi-automatic hanging punctuation.
QuarkXPress
, Adobe InDesign and Corel Ventura
are desktop publishing applications which offer automatic support for hanging punctuation.
A related concept is optical margin alignment
; letters such as W are set slightly into the margin to create an illusion of balance of white space
.
Typesetting
Typesetting is the composition of text by means of types.Typesetting requires the prior process of designing a font and storing it in some manner...
punctuation marks and bullet points, most commonly quotation mark
Quotation mark
Quotation marks or inverted commas are punctuation marks at the beginning and end of a quotation, direct speech, literal title or name. Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a different meaning of a word or phrase than the one typically associated with it and are often used to express irony...
s and hyphen
Hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...
s, so that they do not disrupt the ‘flow’ of a body of text or ‘break’ the margin
Margin (typography)
In typography, a margin is the space that surrounds the content of a page. The margin helps to define where a line of text begins and ends. When a page is justified the text is spread out to be flush with the left and right margins...
of alignment
Typographic alignment
In typesetting and page layout, alignment or range, is the setting of text flow or image placement relative to a page, column , table cell or tab...
. It is so called because the punctuation appears to ‘hang’ in the margin of the text, and is not incorporated into the block or column of text. It is commonly used when text is fully justified
Justification (typesetting)
In typesetting, justification is the typographic alignment setting of text or images within a column or "measure" to align along both the left and right margin...
.
The style was used by Gutenberg in the Gutenberg Bible
Gutenberg Bible
The Gutenberg Bible was the first major book printed with a movable type printing press, and marked the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of the printed book. Widely praised for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities, the book has an iconic status...
, the first book printed in Europe.
Very few desktop publishing
Desktop publishing
Desktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...
applications allow for automatic hanging punctuation. This often requires manual intervention by the designer or typographer, or the use of drawing software which supports this feature, or the use of sophisticated typesetting tools. PdfTeX
PdfTeX
The computer program pdfTeX is an extension of Knuth's typesetting program TeX, and was originally written and developed into a publicly usable product by Hàn Thế Thành as a part of the work for his PhD thesis at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, Brno...
, a variant of the TeX
TeX
TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....
typesetting program, has microtypographic capabilities that allow for semi-automatic hanging punctuation.
QuarkXPress
QuarkXPress
QuarkXPress is a computer application for creating and editing complex page layouts in a WYSIWYG environment. It runs on Mac OS X and Windows. It was first released by Quark, Inc...
, Adobe InDesign and Corel Ventura
Corel Ventura
Ventura Publisher was the first popular desktop publishing package for IBM PC compatible computers running the GEM extension to the DOS operating system. The software was originally developed by Ventura Software, a small software company founded by John Meyer, Don Heiskel and Lee Jay Lorenzen, all...
are desktop publishing applications which offer automatic support for hanging punctuation.
A related concept is optical margin alignment
Optical Margin Alignment
Optical margin alignment outdents letters like A, V, W, Y, and punctuation into the margins to align the text border optically. Some users remark that it makes the text margin look crooked, but this is because text frames or margin guides are visible. If text frames are not visible, e.g...
; letters such as W are set slightly into the margin to create an illusion of balance of white space
White space
White space may refer to:* White space , portions of a page left unmarked** Space , the space between two words of text* Whitespace character, a computer character for the space between words...
.