Ah yes, I just bought Ellen's Thinking With Type, to compensate for my never having any of her typography/design classes when I was studying Digital Art in MICA, and it's an excellent resource. Except for where she calls standards-based designers "HTML purists."

Ironically the website that rails against Dumb Quotes is littered with them: http://www.fonts.com/UsefulLinks/LinkToUs.htm (sidebar mentions "Clicks"). Great post nonetheless.

Ellen rocks! Damn I wish I was there to say hi, though I do occassionally see her on campus at MICA. And as for her book, well there is nothing better out there for teaching or learning about type and typography.

Shouldn't all this stuff be common knowledge to Designers at the AIGA Conference? That stuff seems to be pretty elementary to me. But I like Ms. Lupton, so I'm sure that she knows what she's doing at one of these conferences that I've never been to.

that's so weird. i delivered her mail this afternoon.

As an undergrad at MICA, I had no idea Ellen was such a big deal, but I keep seeing her name everywhere. Maybe all these classes I have will amount to something after all. Too bad I'm not a GD major...

even though her book is an excellent resource and I am sure the lecture is entertaining enough. It seems a little elementary to be discussing in forum like that

It was sort of odd presentation and doesn't translate well to hearing about it secondhand. It was meant to be light-hearted and was done tongue-in-cheek (because, like you guys pointed out, most in the audience are well aware of these issues).

I'd like to rail against smart quotes used in place of inch and foot marks. For example, I drove by a truck that had a sign saying—Stay back 15'—and the foot mark was a closed single quote.

are you trying to get me fired? It's bad enough I read your site at work, now you're giving me entertaining diversions?